[pink]A mention of Chris here too maherjunkie[/pink]
Tragically, Ann Noble Carlton didn't get her heart in time
BY Denis Hamill
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, February 25th 2009
Braganti for News
Ann Noble Carlton lived her dream by visiting the city at Christmas while doctors tried to find her a new heart.
Hamill: Her ailing heart beats for gift of life
Ann Noble Carlton, a heart transplant patient who came here to fulfill a final dream of seeing "the Christmas lights of New York," died Wednesday while waiting for a new heart.
Carlton was a slowly dying 22-year-old from Birmingham, Ala., when the Dr. Theodore Atlas Foundation flew her to New York in December to see those holiday lights.
[pink]She also got to see the New York Jets work out, the Radio City Christmas show, "Wicked" on Broadway and the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree - and she had dinner at Ducale and lunch with "Sex and the City" star Chris Noth at The Palm.[/pink]
Atlas' son Teddy also got her in to see top cardiac surgeons at Mount Sinai Medical Center. They put her on a new drug they hoped would keep her alive long enough to get a heart transplant at Vanderbilt Hospital in Nashville.
"I went to New York certain I was going to die," Carlton said two weeks ago from her home in Birmingham. "But it was like a Christmas miracle because I came home from New York with hope I might live."
Doctors at Vanderbilt had the same hope and placed Carlton on a list for a rare second transplant; her body had rejected her first transplanted heart.
"I spoke to Ann last week and she was so full of hope," Teddy Atlas said. "She was eager to dedicate her life to helping other young transplant kids. She talked about going back to college and living a long life."
Her aunt Lee Dorough said her niece died about noon Wednesday. "She wasn't feeling well all weekend. She thought she was getting a cold," Dorough said.
In the morning her mother took her to the University of Alabama Hospital emergency room.
"Ann was feeling nauseated," Dorough said. "I think she was dying of congestive heart failure. When she got to the hospital she went into arrest. I don't think she ever knew what happened. They worked on her for two hours but couldn't save her. It was just her time."
Dorough said the family was grateful to Teddy Atlas and the City of New York, which opened its heart to Carlton.
"Going to New York was a beautiful gift," Dorough said. "Ann Noble saw things and met people she'd only dreamed about. She came home so full of life, and she died with hope in her heart."
Unfortunately, that same heart would fail her three days after she celebrated her 23rd birthday.
www.nydailynews.com/news/2009/02/25/2009-02-25_tragically_ann_noble_carlton_didnt_get_h.html
