'When I met Chloe she was dead': one girl, four hearts and an NHS miracle
Chloe Narbonne's heart failed when she was 11, starting a near-hopeless fight for survival. A year on from groundbreaking surgery, she is alive and this is her story
"By the time I met Chloe she was dead," Andri(C) Simon says matter-of-factly. "I told her parents clearly that she didn't really have a chance to survive. What I was proposing gave her a theoretical chance." He pauses. "But I also said that the operation might just prolong her agony and suffering - I didn't even know if she would survive it - and that it was OK just to let her go."
Simon, one of the world's leading heart and lung specialists, is recalling the conversation he had at the beginning of May last year with Fabienne Narbonne and Todd Jancey that led to him implanting an artificial heart inside their 12-year-old daughter Chloe. "It was an emotional meeting, it was tense, it was horrible. They were trying to be calm but they were extremely anxious and were holding on to each other for support. They put their last hopes in me and they prayed for a miracle."
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