A 17-year-old is returning to cheering after receiving a rare double organ transplant.
Macey Brown, a high school senior in Fenton, Missouri, was given a second chance at life after she underwent a combined heart and kidney transplant at St. Louis Children’s Hospital.
“I feel really good. I’m back to normal school and I just cheered for the first time last week since everything happened,” Macey told “Good Morning America.”
Macey was diagnosed with a severe congenital heart defect called hypoplastic left heart syndrome shortly after her birth. The heart defect, where the left side of the heart is underdeveloped, occurs in about 1 in 3,846 births in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
ABC News – PHOTO: Macey Brown opens up about returning to cheering after undergoing a combined heart and kidney transplant.
“It is a little surreal at the time — you’re just trying to wrap your head around what’s really going on,” Macey’s dad Cory Brown told “GMA” of the uncertainty around Macey’s health at the time of her birth.
Macey received her first heart transplant at 9 weeks old and went on to live a relatively normal life, but her family said they were warned her new heart might not last forever.
“They told us it was about a 50-50 chance of her needing a new heart before she was the age [of] 20,” Cory Brown said.
Last summer, Macey said she started to develop a cough at camp that wouldn’t go away.
“I started … getting very short of breath over activities that I wouldn’t normally be that short of breath for,” Macey recalled.
Doctors told Macey and her family that her transplanted heart had begun to fail and her kidneys were failing as well.
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Dr. Lakshmi Gokanapudy Hahn, a WashU Medicine transplant cardiologist at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, is one of Macey’s doctors, and said the domino effect of one organ failing after another begins to fail isn’t uncommon.
“When you have heart failure and the heart is not doing a great job pumping blood, other organs tend to get affected,” Gokanapudy Hahn told “GMA.”
In October 2025, Macey underwent a rare combined heart and kidney transplant at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, the first pediatric surgery of its kind in Missouri. Both of the organs Macey received came from the same donor, which helps prevent rejection.
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Macey stayed in the hospital for 54 days before she could be discharged in time to spend Thanksgiving with her family.
The Brown family said they feel grateful for Macey’s second chance and the generosity of both donors’ families.
“I’m very, very grateful and very thankful to the donor family for giving me my organs,” Macey said.
Pam Brown, Macey’s mom, added, “Thank you is not even a big enough word. It’s something that I think about every day. We owe them everything.”
ABC News chief medical correspondent Dr. Tara Narula said on “GMA” Monday that Macey’s story highlights the importance of organ donation.
“We know there [are more than] 100,000 people on the transplant list. Thirteen die every single day. One person can save eight people’s lives,” Narula said.
She added, “While 90% of Americans say they support organ donation, only 60% are signed up, so you can do that through your state’s registry, through your DMV. You can actually go on the iPhone, to the health app and sign up that way.”
