A Heartfelt Story: Ziyan Liu’s Journey From Patient to Author

Ziyan Liu, a 19-year-old sophomore at Johns Hopkins College, has reworked her difficult medical journey as a younger coronary heart transplant affected person at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford into an inspiring novel, with the assist of Make-A-Want® Higher Bay Space. She was identified with an unbalanced atrioventricular (AV) canal—a congenital heart defect—and her ebook, Heartbreaker, Heartbroken, chronicles her tough path to restoration and her outlook on life.

Ziyan’s well being journey started at Packard Kids’s in 2015, when at age 9 she was listed for a coronary heart transplant. Her state of affairs grew to become important in December 2016, resulting in emergency surgical procedure to obtain a ventricular assist device (LVAD), attributable to her coronary heart functioning with just one ventricle.

“The toughest a part of my well being situation wasn’t the bodily ache, however the emotional burden of not feeling ‘complete’ or ‘regular,’” mentioned Ziyan.

A fictional leap

Whereas awaiting a heart transplant, Ziyan spent a number of months on the Ronald McDonald Home at Stanford, frequently attending the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital School Program. Her life shifted positively with a profitable coronary heart transplant in July 2017.

Ziyan was referred to Make-A-Want Higher Bay Space to obtain a want and, after cautious reflection, wished to turn out to be an creator. The Make-A-Want crew related her with a writing mentor, editors, an illustrator, and structure consultants to assist convey her imaginative and prescient to the printed web page. Her want was a multi-year, skill-building expertise leading to a 280-page novel printed by Amazon publishing.

The ebook attracts from folks and experiences that influenced her at Packard Kids’s. Inspired by her ardour for studying, Ziyan narrates her real-world well being experiences, together with emotional and psychological challenges, providing assist and luxury to others. She explores themes of loneliness and the battle for “normalcy,” aiming to point out younger sufferers dealing with related challenges that they aren’t alone.

“I’ve at all times dreamed of holding a ebook the place readers may escape, and relate,” mentioned Ziyan.

Ziyan’s want celebration was held at Lucile Packard in December 2025, the place she was in a position to signal her ebook and take footage with the crew that impressed her novel.

Characters who heal

Heartbreaker, Heartbroken options characters impressed by real-life Stanford Medication Kids’s Well being care crew members, together with lecturers from the hospital school like Kathy Ho and Robert Siu, who, in response to Ziyan, offered “unwavering assist and training.”

The character June attracts from former Child Life Specialist Jeanie Liang (now Sophie’s Place Broadcast Studio coordinator), who educated 9-year previous Ziyan about her prognosis and coverings. Within the ebook, Ziyan displays on Liang’s comforting presence, which made her really feel relaxed. “Her easy acts, like coloring with me, helped me really feel much less alone.”

“When Ziyan instructed me that she included a couple of of us in her ebook, I felt extremely honored,” mentioned Liang. “To be part of a affected person’s medical journey is a sacred factor, and to be invited into this intimate a part of her life, I’m humbled by it. It’s a privilege few folks outdoors of the hospital get to expertise.”

Like many writers, Ziyan confronted challenges in writing, together with conveying the emotional depth of her experiences and battling self-doubt, but her dedication created a story crammed with authenticity and hope.

“This ebook will likely be invaluable to these with related circumstances, offering a strong sense of neighborhood,” mentioned Liang. “Figuring out with somebody who’s been on the same path is impactful, and solely somebody who has skilled the same path can actually talk that.”

By way of her ebook, Ziyan conveys that “power and hope can result in thriving amid overwhelming hurdles. I wished to seize the vacancy and loneliness I felt, but additionally supply readers hope.” She intends to reward copies to hospitals nationwide, permitting each sufferers and medical professionals the prospect to discover its pages.

A future value thriving for

Targeted on her research in molecular and mobile biology and psychology, Ziyan goals to enter pediatric cardiology after commencement from Johns Hopkins College. Her firsthand encounter with compassionate care at Packard Kids’s fuels her aspiration to turn out to be a physician-scientist, and hopefully someday to stroll the halls of Lucile Packard Kids’s Hospital Stanford as a pediatric heart specialist. “The docs and workers at Packard Kids’s didn’t simply save my life, they taught me to understand life and admire drugs’s potential,” Ziyan mentioned.

9 years post-transplant, Ziyan continues to thrive, residing with gratitude and objective. Her journey has instilled classes on significant residing for herself and her donor, honoring desires unrealized.

“Above all, my experiences have taught me the best way to stay as an alternative of simply being alive, and at present, I see myself as residing for 2: my youthful self, to heal all of the harm that she went by, and my donor, to attain all of the desires that they have been by no means in a position to obtain,” mentioned Ziyan.

Learn more about the Betty Irene Moore Children’s Heart Center at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health >