by Megan Redshaw at The Defender
Simone Scott, a 19-year-old freshman at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., died June 11 of complications from a heart transplant she underwent after developing what her doctors believe was myocarditis following her second dose of the Moderna COVID vaccine.
Scott received her second dose of Moderna on May 1, WLWT 5 reported. When the 2020 Mason High School graduate and senior class vice president paid a surprise visit to her parents for Mother’s Day, May 9, her mother said she noticed Scott wasn’t feeling well.
“I did notice she was kind of stuffy so her voice wasn’t exactly the same,” Valerie Kraimer said.
Scott returned to campus on May 11, where even after a visit to the doctor, her condition worsened. Kraimer said multiple tests came back negative including a COVID-19 test.
“On Sunday morning [May 16], she texted her father and said, ‘Dad, I feel so dizzy. I cannot get out of bed’ and that’s when everything really started from there,” Kraimer said.
Scott’s parents were hundreds of miles away so her father called campus police to have someone check in on her.
“We learned that a doctor had to jump on her chest and give her CPR because she was that bad, and then the whole cascade of events happened, Kraimer said. “They had to intubate her and realized she was in heart failure.”
After multiple interventions, including hooking Scott to an ECMO machine that mirrors the function of the heart so her own heart could rest, doctors determined she needed a heart replacement. Her doctors have not fully confirmed the cause of her death, but they said it appears Scott suffered from myocarditis.
Myocarditis is inflammation of the heart muscle that can lead to cardiac arrhythmia and death. According to researchers at the National Organization for Rare Disorders, myocarditis can result from infections, but “more commonly the myocarditis is a result of the body’s immune reaction to the initial heart damage.”…
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