Editor's note: The following article contains graphic content that might make some readers uncomfortable. However, we feel the language and imagery are important to telling this story of a remarkable woman.



vanessa.fultz@gaflnews.com



"(Whether) I need to cry or hit a pillow or go outside and scream ... after that it's over," Pinkard said. "I don't allow myself to dwell on pity. That's not an acceptable emotion."



As April Pinkard walked into the exam room at Dr. Mohammed Choudhury's office in Live Oak during her last checkup she asked the nurse, "When ya getting my recliner?"

The nurse smiled.

"I see the doc sometimes up to 15 times in a month's time," Pinkard said, noting this includes trips to the hospital.

Pinkard, 31, has chronic lung disease, which triggers chronic asthma, chronic bronchitis and chronic pneumonia. An onset could send her to the emergency room.

Born prematurely, Pinkard suffered numerous complications, including an underdeveloped and diseased lung. Her right lung was removed at age 4, but not before the disease had spread to the remaining lung.

At about age 6 Pinkard's heart shifted to the spot where the right lung had been. Once her heart started moving, it didn't stop.

While examining Pinkard several years ago, Choudhury, a pulmonologist, or lung specialist, could only detect a faint heartbeat.

After testing, Choudhury discovered Pinkard's heart had further shifted and was moving around in her body.

"It wasn't where it was before," Pinkard said. "I'd go back and it would be in a different place. It kind of became like 'where's Waldo?'"

Pinkard said she sometimes could place her hand on her back and feel a heartbeat. Other times she could feel the heart press against her kidney.

"She would mess with the nurses when they couldn't find her heartbeat," said Pinkard's husband, David. "She would finally tell them, 'It's here behind my kidney.'"

Choudhury sent Pinkard to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville where she was diagnosed with a disorder so rare it doesn't even have a name. In fact, Pinkard says her doctor at the Mayo Clinic told her she is the only person in the world with the disorder -- best described as a heart that is mobile or floating.

Surgeons at the Mayo Clinic performed what Pinkard describes as "a four and a half hour life-saving procedure."

Pinkard said surgeons found her heart positioned under her liver, on top of her spleen, laying on its side and lodged between her ribs. Retrieving the heart was risky and delicate.

"When they touched (my heart), it stopped," she said. "They filled my chest cavity with water and floated it into the correct position."

To immobilize her heart doctors put in what Pinkard describes as "breast implants."

"Well, that's what they are," she said, giggling.

"She calls herself a freak of nature because most doctors she's seen have never seen this condition before," David said.

Choudhury said he was surprised when he learned of Pinkard's condition.

"What you read in the textbook is sometimes different than what you see in the real world," he said during an appointment with Pinkard on which she was accompanied by a Democrat reporter.

Though Pinkard's heart has been immobilized, her overall condition continues to worsen.

Years of steroids, a necessary medication, has resulted in bone deterioration and heart complications. She has suffered heart failure several times and her bones are so brittle her ribs are beginning to break.

"My ribs have broken over 50 times," she said. "Now my back is starting to fracture."

Though Pinkard's health is grim and her condition has been lifelong, her outlook is bright. In fact, she has quite a knack for entertaining people when discussing her condition.

"In school they called me the human weathervane because every time I started wheezing it would rain," she said with a smile.

"I coughed, sneezed and farted all at the same time and broke six ribs a few months ago. I guess it's a talent," Pinkard said, followed by a belly laugh.

"They say I'll eventually sever my spinal cord, but that's okay, I'll just run people over with my wheelchair and leave tire marks to prove I was there," she said, adding that she wants a motorized chair with a horn.

Pinkard is upbeat, but often frank with her doctors. She said that when asked by physicians or nurses, "How are you feeling today?" she often responds, "I feel like (expletive deleted). How do you feel?"

Once a nurse -- new to the staff -- tried to force-feed Pinkard a bowl of green gelatin.

"I don't like green Jell-O. I like the red," she said she told the nurse. "The green makes me sick."

Pinkard said the cafeteria knew she preferred red Jell-O, but the food trays evidently got switched. The nurse went at Pinkard with a spoonful of green Jell-O after being warned not to do so. The bowl of Jell-O wound up on the nurse's head.

Since her life has been scheduled around doctor's visits, no one appreciates a caring physician as much as Pinkard does. When Pinkard was a child she badly skinned her knee at summer camp. She didn't call for her mom or dad, but for her doctor.

"I want Dr. Horwitz. I want Dr. Horwitz. If I have to have my leg cut off I want him to do it," she remembers screaming at age 11.

About eight years ago Pinkard wound up in the hospital with a severe respiratory infection. Henry Hernandez, Pinkard's respiratory therapist, quickly came to her side to console her.

"He held my hand and sang to me while I threw up on his shoe," she said.

David said he took seriously "that till death do us part thing."

When she and David were first married she went through a bad sick spell.

"I would wake up in the middle of the night and I'd clean her up and I'd get her washed up and redressed," he said.

Once after Pinkard was admitted into the hospital for heart failure, David drove to the hospital to be with her after finishing a 15-hour work shift.

"Every chance I got I was over there," he said.

Pinkard wastes no time on self-pity. In dealing with frustrations, she allows no more than five minutes to express her emotion.

"(Whether) I need to cry or hit a pillow or go outside and scream ... after that it's over," she said. "I don't allow myself to dwell on pity. That's not an acceptable emotion."

Lynn Rutherford, a friend of Pinkard's, said she is inspired by Pinkard's courage and "never give up attitude."

"She's someone that gives back to the community even when she's struggling herself," Rutherford said. "I find that an inspiration."

The two are in the Live Oak Woman's Club together.

Pinkard hopes to pass that inspiration along. She recently held a seminar on positive living at the local library. She plans to conduct another one sometime this month. For more information about the seminar call 386-330-6284.

"People find me interesting," she said.