• Posted September 2, 2025

'Reborn Again': Blind Bride-To-Be Thriving After Triple-Organ Transplant

Stricken with cancer in infancy, Jessica Lopez endured tumor-fighting treatments that saved her young life but also left her with lasting heart damage.  

By the time she reached her early 30s, Lopez, who was left blind by her cancer, also found herself in triple-organ failure — her heart, liver and kidneys were shutting down.  

A rare triple-organ transplant was deemed her only hope for survival.

Recently engaged to fiancé Christian, the Chicago native's prospects looked bleak until a team of specialists at Northwestern Memorial Hospital embarked on the risky procedure. 

Up until then, triple-organ transplants had only been performed 59 times in the United States, researchers said in background notes.

However, “from the day I met her in clinic, I knew we were going to pull out all the stops to do what we needed to do to get her feeling better,” Dr. Benjamin Bryner, a cardiac surgeon at Northwestern's Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute in Chicago, said in a hospital news release. 

“She has an attitude that’s really positive, she’s endearing, and has a great sense of humor," he explained. "Just walking out of the clinic room, I thought, ‘this is going to be tricky, but we absolutely have to do this.’ "

Lopez, 32, said she’s always been a "very positive" person.

“I don’t like to ever think negatively,” she said. “I was confident from the very beginning that my doctors at Northwestern Medicine were going to do this successfully.”

Lopez's challenges began early: As an infant she battled leukemia and an eye cancer called retinoblastoma, which left her blind. 

Aggressive treatments allowed Lopez to beat her cancers. However, according to the National Cancer Institute, adult survivors of childhood cancers face a 10-fold higher risk for heart disease and a 15-fold higher odds for heart failure, due to the toxic toll of cancer treatment on the heart. 

In Lopez's case, "the treatment she needed to become a cancer survivor likely led to her developing heart failure," said Dr. Jonathan Rich, a heart failure and heart transplantation cardiologist at Bluhm. "It feels really unfair. Unfortunately, we do see this and in her in case I think that’s exactly what happened.”

By November of 2023, bride-to-be Lopez discovered that she was in advanced cardiomyopathy, a type of heart disease that impairs the heart's muscle, with downstream effects for other organs.  

Doctors told her she was already experiencing heart and liver failure. 

She was immediately put on the wait list for those organs. Over the following year, her kidney function also declined, putting her into kidney failure as well.

Triple-organ transplants are challenging because all three organs must come from the same donor, potentially upping wait times. 

Risks to recipients also rise as the number of organs needed increases. 

“When you have multiple failing organs, along with a patient who is young and has heart damage due to chemotherapy as opposed to the usual heart disease, it gets a lot more complicated,” Bryner explained. “It’s unusual to find a recipient who can safely get through this complex of an operation.”

However, on Feb. 24, three organs suddenly became available.  

Lopez was sent to surgery to first transplant the heart and kidneys, with a separate procedure for the kidneys scheduled later.

“We transplanted the heart and liver in one block to limit the amount of time the organs go without blood or oxygen," said transplant surgeon Dr. Juan Carlos Caicedo-Ramirez, who directs Northwestern's Liver Transplant Program. "The heart and the liver stay connected the whole time from the donor to the recipient." 

He noted that "while Dr. Bryner was doing the heart transplant, we were sewing the liver graft. You have two surgeons working simultaneously and that’s one of the advantages of our team.”

A successful kidney transplant procedure followed.

It's been a long journey back to health for Lopez, who has been cancer-free for 20 years and appears to be thriving with her new set of organs. 

“I feel like I was reborn again,” she said. “I have more energy, my heart beats much stronger and my hands are even warmer. I’m incredibly grateful for my organ donor and their family. Because of their selfless decision, I’ve been given a second chance at life and can start planning for my future.”

Although she lost her sight in infancy, Lopez has learned to navigate her world with ease.

“If I have to go somewhere I use landmarks when traveling on my own,” she explained in the news release. “My phone has accessibility to access rideshare and social media apps. When cooking for myself I use my hands to locate items on the stove. I cook things like rice, seafood and spaghetti. It’s just about setting my mind to it.”

She's already got her post-surgery goals in place, planning to study forensics at Loyola University Chicago with the aim of becoming a crime scene investigator.

Romance is blooming, too: Jessica and Christian are planning a California wedding for 2026.

More information

Find out more about the later life effects of childhood cancer treatments at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

SOURCE: Northwestern Memorial Hospital, news release, Aug. 26, 2025