A Decade Later: Catching up with Kyah DeSimone
The Cape Cod Healthcare phlebotomist looks back on her heart transplant in 2013 with gratitude and says the life-changing experience as a teenager inspired her career path.
Growing up, Kyah DeSimone enjoyed all the things pre-teens loved to do—hanging at the mall, sleepovers, going to the movies. Kyah was passionate about cheerleading and hip-hop dance. When she entered 8th grade at Dennis-Yarmouth Regional High School, Kyah joined the cheerleading team.
The future looked bright for the active and studious 13-year-old.
But then one day out of the blue, Kyah started to hear what she described as the sound of “Pop Rocks” candy in her chest. “It was really weird,” says Kyah, who was born with cardiomyopathy, a disorder that affects the heart muscle. “No one could hear it except me. Something just felt really off.”
While at a friend’s sleepover, she began to feel severe chest pains and had trouble breathing. At 3 a.m., Kyah’s mom, Danielle, rushed her to the ER at Cape Cod Hospital and learned she was experiencing heart failure. She was then taken by ambulance to Boston Children’s Hospital in October of 2012. She desperately needed a new heart, but it would take months before finding an exact match.
She was the first patient at Children’s Hospital to be implanted with a small, portable heart pump, which would help to restore her normal life while she waited for the life-saving transplant. On Easter weekend in 2013, she received the call she had been waiting for—a perfect match came in from a donor in Virginia. Kyah received a heart transplant on March 30, 2013.
The major procedure involved many hospital stays, medical visits and physical therapy. It was a long road to recovery. “I am just grateful to my family and to God for the strength I was able to keep and have during the whole process because it was very scary for a 13-year-old,” says Kyah, who had to learn how to walk again after her surgery. Kyah also adds she keeps in touch with the donor’s family to this day.
Pathway to phlebotomy career
Several weeks after her heart transplant in 2013, Kyah was escorted back to her West Yarmouth home on her 14th birthday in a Yarmouth police cruiser by Steven Xiarhos, then Deputy Yarmouth Police Chief. “It’s kind of surreal because now I am working at the Nicholas G. Xiarhos Blood Donor Center [named after Steven’s son],” says Kyah, who was given a veteran’s pin from Steven Xiarhos, which she still has to this day.
Throughout her childhood and teen years, Kyah recalls getting her blood drawn frequently, sometimes two to three times a day, and didn’t like the feeling of some not-so-great experiences. “So that is part of the reason why I wanted to come into this field because I know how it should feel to get your blood drawn and how it shouldn’t feel.”
After high school, she enrolled in the diagnostic technician program—a dual program in EKG and phlebotomy—at Cape Cod Community College. Upon graduation in May 2023, Kyah started her career as a phlebotomist at Cape Cod Healthcare, where she now enjoys working with a tightknit team at blood drives inside the Blood Mobile as well as locations across the Cape, including at Cape Cod Hospital and Falmouth Hospital.
Kyah, now 25, says going through a heart transplant made her look at life differently. “You can’t take too much for granted because it could be taken away in a blink of an eye,” says Kyah. “Life has a whole new meaning to me now than it did before.”
She credits blood donors for saving her life. “I had to get a lot of blood transfusions. If we didn’t have people who donated blood, I probably wouldn’t be here today.”
Living her best life today
Her mother, Danielle, looks back on that early October weekend of 2012 with astonishment and gratitude. “It changed our lives forever,” says Danielle. “To see how far Kyah has come since still amazes me to this day. She had gotten severely ill very quickly and wasn’t supposed to survive this heart failure, but knowing that God had her in his hands, He gave us the peace we needed to get us through until her transplant on Easter weekend.”
Although Kyah was forced to stop dancing after her heart transplant, she finds other ways to stay active, including light walks, leg workouts and yoga. “I just have to be careful of what type of exercises I am doing and not stressing my heart out too much.”
As Kyah reflects on her teenage years, she says she missed out on a lot of school activities, holidays and spending time with friends. So today, she more than makes up for those lost years. “I go to the movies. I love to go out to eat and try different restaurants and entertainment centers, like K1 Speed with indoor go-karting,” says Kyah. “I am like a big kid now since I didn’t really do too much of that when I was a teenager. I’m living my best life now.”
