It’s Monkeyshines as Stormie Weathers Transplants

--Last Valentine’s Day, Stormie Jones got a new heart. Doctors threw in a liver as well, making her the first transplant recipient to receive both organs. Today, Stormie scrambles around the monkey bars like an ordinary 7-year-old. “She does everything now,” says her mother, Lois Jones. “She scares me.” Stormie lives in Dallas with her mother and 10-year-old sister, Misty. “I’m fine,” she says; her history of two heart attacks and unsuccessful triple-coronary bypass surgery are just that: history. Stormie suffered from a rare congenital disease, caused by a faulty liver, that had increased her blood cholesterol to nearly 10 times normal. Misty has a similar, but less serious, problem that is treated by diet, which both girls now follow. They primarily eat vegetables and pudding made with skim milk. Stormie must take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of her life. Her cholesterol level is still twice what it should be. Sometimes her first-grade classmates are harder to deal with than her health. “One little boy asked her if she was Stormie Jones,” her mother said. “When she told him yes, he said, ‘Well, you’re going to die.’ She gets depressed about it from time to time. . . . But when something good happens, she thinks, wow, I am special.” Whatever the future holds, Lois Jones has loved the last year. “I’m really very thankful, because this year marks another year that I’ve had to spend with Stormie,” she says. “And that truly is a miracle.”