Wiregrass' Longest Surviving Heart Recipient Loses Her Fight

When thinking of Vicky Love, those closest to her remember the young woman lovingly caressing her miniature Pomeranian B.B., the one who tirelessly spoke out for organ donation, and who enjoyed her last Christmas with her family in Dothan.
And when you think of her many health problems, don’t forget about her courage.
Love, the longest-living heart recipient in the Wiregrass, died in her Dothan home early Thursday morning. She was 38.
Her father Gerald likes to think about that courage and the relationship with his daughter that grew into a close friendship.
“This kid didn’t have a whole lot of fear about her,” he said. “After she got cancer, I told her that her brother Steve said she was the most courageous person he’d ever known.
“She looked at me and said, ‘Daddy, courage is when you go on and do what you know absolutely has to be done without any doubt when you’re absolutely scared to death.’
“And she would do things when she was so scared she’d be shaking, but she’d do it anyhow. Vicky just had tremendous will and faith.”
Visitation is scheduled for 6-9 tonight at Byrd Funeral Home, and the service will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday at the funeral home.
After a seven-year battle with cardiomyopathy, Love received her heart transplant at the age of 25 in Marcy 1985 at Stanford Medical Center in Palo Alto, Calif. Cardiomyopathy is an enlargement of the heart muscle caused by an infection.
Love was initially given a 20 percent chance to live 10 years. She lived almost 14 years, surviving bouts with tumor skin cancer, a ruptured disk, and other problems until she contracted the extremely rare merkle cell cancer. Love was one of only two Alabamians diagnosed with merkle cell.
The longest-living heart transplant recipients at the University of Alabama Medical Center have survived for 17 years, said April Crosswy, a clinical research analyst in the UAB Cardiac Transplant Research Office.
“I’ve known her since she was a child,” said Gloria Stapler, who has worked with Love’s father at Southeast Alabama Youth Services for more than 25 years. “She was always a very happy child – artistic, creative and caring. Even in the midst of all she’s been through, she was such a courageous person and an inspiration to many people.
“I saw her as early as last week at (Flowers Hospital), and she knew it was only a matter of time. But she was talking about heaven and what she would do when she got there, about having a party and the people up there she would invite. That’s what I’m picturing: her having a big party today.”
Teresa Culpepper, a close friend since she met Love in 1991 at Premier Athletic Club, likes to remember some of the many times they just had fun together.
They planned to write a book together, and Culpepper said she still plans to combine her notes with what the poems and other writings Love left behind on her computer.
“We were kind of like partners in crime,” Culpepper said. “I’m an only child, and she was pretty much a sister to me. The first time we were partners in crime, we went down to the beach and talked about girl things, reminisced about when we were kids and wish we had known each other when we were growing up.
“I took her to Birmingham for a biopsy, and doctors suggested that she drink one beer before the biopsy, and we bought some liquor and had a little more fun than what they had requested. It was not hard for them to take that biopsy.
“Anytime we were in the dumps, we’d call each other and hop in the car and start driving.”
Even in the pain of her last days, Love was still thinking of the people she loved. Her father said she asked that her friends be told to get their own lives straightened out, so she’d see them in heaven. Somehow, she found the strength to write one last message on her laptop computer in the last week of her life.
In the past year, Love spent much of her time on the Internet with her home page, “Victoria’s Veil.” On her site, which can be accessed at www.angelfire.com/md/prayerMat, Love left a message that could serve as the legacy of her life when she explained how she came up with the title of her page.
“That I will have fought for what was right and fair, that I will have risked for that which mattered, that I will have given help to those who were in need, and that I will have left the earth a better place for what I’ve done and who I’ve been.
“I truly had the meaning of the veil of love as my heritage name, but also as a veil that God has surrounded and engulfed me in to love, protect, strengthen and guide, also. . . He in His grace and love has carried me when I could not walk and led me when I could not choose.
“Once again, I have been brought to His table and kneel at His feet and ask, ‘Lord, where do I go?’”