Kelly Perkins Kelly Perkins Young, fit, energetic and nicknamed “the Temple” by her college friends for her extremely healthy eating habits and lifestyle, this young woman from Lake Tahoe, CA, who loved the to hike in the mountains was the picture of health. Or so it seemed.
By the age of 30, Kelly Perkins discovered that her heart couldn’t keep up. She was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, a disease that inflames the heart muscle, preventing them from working properly. The source of her condition was traced to an unknown virus that seemed to nest into her heart – otherwise she was symptomatic (no aches, fever, nausea or other symptoms).
Kelly suddenly found herself so sick and weak with the effects of a failing heart that she had to have her husband carry her up the stairs to bed at night (and her passion for mountaineering was put on hold, indefinitely). For over three years she lived in and out of hospitals, struggling with her deteriorating heart, and health, until she received a transplant in 1995.
Within 10 months after her transplant, Kelly was well enough to start climbing again and by 2001 was ready to take on one of the world’s most famous peaks. She scaled Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa, to commemorate the first-ever heart transplant, which took place in South Africa in 1967. She has also made it to the top of the Matterhorn in Switzerland and numerous other summits in New Zealand, Argentina, and Japan to name a few.
Her book, The Climb of My Life, Scaling Mountains with a Borrowed Heart (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007) details her inspiring journey back to good health. She is a leading crusader for organ, blood, and tissue donation, and has been featured in media such as NPR, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, Self Magazine, NBC News' The Today Show, Oprah & Friends with Dr. Mehmet Oz, and ABC News’ Good Morning America. Together with her husband, Craig, she has co-founded HydraCoach, Inc., a sports/medical device company, and they live in southern California. For more information, please visit www.theclimbofmylife.com.