SA’s Hannah Tucker has had two heart transplants and a kidney from mum: ‘I’m so lucky to be alive’

Theresa Tucker has said goodbye to her chronically ill daughter Hannah seven heartbreaking times, never knowing if she would live or die.

Hannah Tucker (white t-shirt) with Marcus (5 Nephew), Sienna (7 Niece) and Theresa (Mother). Hannah has had two heart transplants and a kidney from her mum. Picture: Tim Joy

Theresa Tucker has said goodbye to her chronically ill daughter seven heartbreaking times, never knowing if she would live or die.

“Each time, I didn’t know if she would come back,” says the mum-of-four, whose oldest daughter, Hannah Tucker, has had two lifesaving heart transplants and also received a kidney from her mum.

“That was very hard. We could have lost her so many times.”

Hannah – who is joining the DonateLife campaign to encourage Australians to sign up for the donor registry – was only 14 when she discovered her extremely rare, potentially fatal heart condition restrictive cardiomyopathy, which affects just one in a million children.

Her shocked family was told the sporty teenager, who had been fainting on the netball court and losing energy, would need an urgent transplant to survive. Eleven months later, just days after her 16th birthday in 2007, she received a new heart.

Hannah Tucker with her mum, Theresa. Picture: Tim Joy

“It was very scary,” says Hannah, now 33.

“I didn’t really understand what was going on. I was just a normal teenager and suddenly I’m needing a heart transplant.”

Nearly eight years later, Hannah’s body started to reject her donor heart. It triggered another health emergency, with Hannah spending months in ICU.

Extremely high doses of the steroid prednisolone – designed to save the transplant – have left her with necrosis, which still affects her knees, shoulders and ankles, and chalky bones from osteoporosis.

When the treatments failed to save the donor organ, the then-24-year-old was strapped to a mechanical heart to keep her alive while a new donor could be found.

Hannah Tucker with her niece Sienna, 7, and five-year-old nephew Marcus: “If I’m not working or on holidays, I want to be with the kids.” Picture: Tim Joy

After many weeks waiting in a hospital bed and then a long recovery from her second transplant, Hannah needed to learn to walk again – at the same time as her baby niece started to toddle.

“I was on the ground trying to walk and Sienna was helping me,” says Hannah, who has been told she cannot have her own children and credits her niece, now seven, and five-year-old nephew Marcus with inspiring her recovery.

“That was my goal, to get back to them. If I’m not working or on holidays, I want to be with the kids.”

While in the Melbourne hospital with Hannah as she recovered from her second transplant, Theresa witnessed a grieving family farewell a young mother, who was killed while fetching nappies for her baby early one morning.

Her loved ones gathered around her bed as she was taken to an operating theatre to retrieve her organs.

Hannah Tucker. Hannah has had two heart transplants and a kidney from her mum. Picture: Tim Joy

“They followed her in procession,” says Theresa.

“I was watching every step and thinking how hard that would be ... to see that family really made me understand the sacrifices that they were making.”

A few years later, in 2021, an innocent kiss on a date led to another health crisis for Hannah, who developed cytomegalovirus, a common form of herpes that is fairly harmless for most people but lifethreatening for her.

It attacked her lungs, leaving her unable to breathe and forcing her into an induced coma for 31 days. At the end of that ordeal, she was told she would need yet another transplant, this time a new kidney.

Both Hannah’s parents were strong matches but Theresa says she “wanted it to be me ... it wasn’t a decision at all”.

Hannah initially resisted the transplant from her mum, who had already given up so much to become a full-time carer.

“She had always been there 1000 per cent and I was frustrated that she needed to be that person again, to give that much of herself again so I thought I would have a donor kidney,” she says.

“But then was I potentially taking that from someone else when I had one right here.”

Today, Hannah is feeling strong and healthy and ticking off her life goals. She’s owned her own home and finished a degree in social work against the odds. She lives with her partner of three years, Lachlan, in Hope Valley and works as a school support officer at a northern-suburbs high school.

“I would have died, probably before my 20s, without a transplant,” says Hannah, who does not know any details about her donors.

“Without the donor, I would never have done what I’ve been able to achieve, never have met my niece and nephew, wouldn’t have met my partner and the life of my family would be very different without me.

“It’s changed my family’s life, giving an organ to one person actually changes a lot of lives.”