Indiana girl, 8, receives lifesaving heart transplant just in time for the holidays

An 8-year-old Indiana girl will celebrate the holidays at home following a seven-month stay in the hospital after receiving a new heart in a real-life Christmas miracle.

Little Skylin, of New Albany, has been a patient at Norton Children’s Hospital for 236 days, having checked in during April for what her parents originally thought was respiratory failure.

Instead, doctors informed her family that the young girl was in the end stages of heart failure. She spent 201 days waiting for the heart needed to save her life.

“It’s probably the hardest thing we’ve ever had to experience in life is the waiting. The waiting is very, very, very difficult because you never know what each day brings,” Kaylyn Williams, Skylin’s mother, told WBPF News.

The family’s patience was finally rewarded on Nov. 22 when Skylin’s new heart arrived via a donor.

Skylin, ever the trouper, was up and walking after just 18 days of recovery following her transplant surgery — with a new hunger to tackle all the things she’d been missing during her treatment.

“I’ve been waiting a very, very long time,” Skylin told the local outlet.

Skylin previously had a temporary heart valve inserted to better her chances of survival, making her the youngest person in the world to receive the device.

“It worked really well to kind of help, I think, save her life — to get her to transplant,” Sarah Wilkens, Skylin’s cardiologist, told the outlet.

Skylin will attend rehab at Frazier Rehab Institute, but she is set to wrap up just in time for Christmas.

“It’s given her such a better quality of life that I could have never dreamed was possible. Because when we first got here, she was so close to death,” Williams told the outlet.