|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
In honor of her 10-year heart transplant anniversary, Pleasanton’s Megan Mehta founded a nonprofit organization this year to bring comfort to children undergoing long-term treatment in hospitals.
Officially launching the Megan Mehta Family Foundation in February, the 22-year-old has donated more than 17,000 items worth over $250,000 to children’s hospitals in California, including the site of her procedure, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford.
The hauls have included pens, pencils, journals and notebooks — items that Mehta said she was inspired to donate because of the comfort they provided her during medical treatments.
“We’re so grateful to Megan and the Megan Mehta Family Foundation for their generosity to help create moments of joy for patients and families,” Lucile Packard Foundation officials wrote on social media — the sole nonprofit fundraising organization for Stanford Medicine Children’s Health.
At the root of the Megan Mehta Family Foundation is Mehta’s run-in with dilated cardiomyopathy, a disease of the heart that causes its chambers to expand and become less effective at pumping blood through the body.
Although Mehta was born without any health conditions, her life changed at 8 years old when she contracted a virus.
Even after the symptoms of the virus faded, she found herself short of breath.
A visit to the hospital revealed that she had developed the heart disease, without a way to undo the damage, she told the Pleasanton Weekly.
“Once you have it, you have a weak heart for life if you remain stable,” she said.
Mehta’s condition was relatively stable from ages 8 to 12 years old, but she said her heart’s performance was “slowly declining”.
“The tricky deal with cardiology is that you can be on a downward trajectory and at any given point, just fall off a cliff,” Mehta explained. “That’s what happened.”
During October 2015, she was placed on a waitlist to receive a heart transplant and shortly after she received a pacemaker.
Mehta was also hooked up to a central line delivering medication to her heart. At about a foot and a half, the tubing limited her ability to move.
The only things that kept her from “going crazy” were art, journaling and puzzles, she said.
“There was very little at that point that could uplift my spirits. I (was) obviously very depressed,” she explained. “It was a stressful time for the whole family, but I had this one creative outlet to keep me grounded and let me focus on taking things one day at a time.”
By February 2016, she received a heart transplant from an anonymous donor and within 10 days, Mehta said she could walk double or triple the distance she could travel pre-transplant.
She went on to complete middle school, graduate from high school and attend college at the University of California, Berkeley.
“Having this freedom, having my life back due to my transplant is really revolutionary,” she said. “I am not just living and breathing and being alive. I’m actually having the freedom to live and go places and do things that I love.”
Meanwhile, she aimed to do something charitable annually in honor of her donor and the medicine behind her transplant.
As the 10th anniversary of her procedure approached, she envisioned creating a nonprofit to “focus on giving back on a more regular basis”.
Having found comfort in creative endeavors while undergoing medical treatment, Mehta wanted to give other children the same support.
“I knew that I had to do something that would help these kids have a creative outlet that they could plug into when they’re feeling scared or overwhelmed, or they just want some time alone,” she said.
An opportunity arose last year, when she discovered that a stationary retailer at a local mall was closing shop along with all of its other stores in the U.S. Mehta said she contacted officials at the business — who want to serve as a silent partner — to request their donation of extra stock.
Officials at the company obliged and sent thousands of boxed items to Mehta’s home in Pleasanton.
Stacked 5 to 6 feet high in the family’s garage, Mehta said the containers were filled with things such as pens, pencils, journals and notebooks.
By February, she launched the foundation and since then Mehta has donated thousands of items to hospitals including Lucile Packard and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital.
In addition to creative endeavors, the supplies were set for use in hospital schools.
“The hospital school is a really integral part of having a sense of normalcy, but also being able to return to school in life, as expected, with minimal disruptions,” she explained.
Following the initial corporate donation, the foundation will rely on ongoing fundraising to support hospitalized children. For more information about the nonprofit, visit meganmehtafamilyfoundation.org.
