A woman was stopped by airport security in New Zealand for carrying a human heart in her hand luggage. Jessica Manning was moving from New Zealand to Australia and had to explain to the authorities that she had undergone a double heart and liver transplant eight years ago and that the organ was hers.
"I was there for about an hour trying to get this damn heart to Australia," said the woman. Nevertheless, Manning managed to board the plane and take the old heart with her.
According to the NZ Herald, the woman was born with six heart defects, which led her to undergo surgery several times during her childhood. The first three operations took place when Jessica was five months, three and six years old.
At the age of 19 she went into heart failure and at 22 she was diagnosed with liver disease. In 2017 Jessica was put on the waiting list for a transplant and waited 16 months for her organs.
After the transplant, the woman decided to keep her old heart. Before that, Jessica donated both organs for studies, but 10 months later they called her to say that they no longer needed the heart. So she decided to keep the organ.
"I said yes because I wanted to bury it in a property that meant something to me, maybe the first house I bought, and then I wanted to plant a tree on top of it," she said.
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