Heart Transplant Recipient Pursues Dream of Career in Medicine
For many years, Gianna Paniagua enjoyed success as a freelance sculpture artist despite her childhood dream of becoming a doctor. As an infant heart transplant recipient, she had been advised by her team that a career in medicine would be too strenuous on her body. After undergoing several treatments and procedures as an adult, though, her team gave her the green light, and Paniagua enrolled in the Columbia University Postbac Premed Program soon after.
Gianna Paniagua, a student in the Postbac Premed Program, is one of the longest-living infant heart transplant recipients in the United States. Although she received the transplant at 14 months old, Paniagua has consulted with her transplant team about all major life decisions and experiences she has been interested in through adulthood, including her career.
“When I was three, I decided I wanted to be a doctor, and that's what I intended to do until midway through college when my transplant team told me I wasn’t allowed,” she said.
Paniagua’s team advised that her body may not have the stamina to pursue a future in medicine in earnest. Despite her resilience, she dismissed her dream of becoming a doctor and instead focused her energy on her creativity.
At the University of Pittsburgh, Paniagua changed her major from the pre-med track to studio arts and began developing a technique of paper cutting and layering materials to create sculptures that spoke to her experience living as a heart transplant recipient. Her work, which explores themes surrounding the human body and its ability to heal, allowed her to work as a freelance artist following graduation.
As heart transplant patients, we know that things can go wrong with our transplant at any moment, but also one day we will need yet another organ.
“I curated and exhibited in art shows with my friends in unconventional spaces, making some of the most fun and memorable experiences I've had in my lifetime,” she reflected. “My art itself is deeply personal, so the process of making it is cathartic, therapeutic, and refreshing.”
Paniagua’s art career took her all over the United States through residencies, solo and group exhibitions, and internship opportunities. In 2014, she was named the VSA Emerging Artist of the Year by the Kennedy Center.
With the desire to take her art to a deeper level, Paniagua enrolled at the California College of the Arts to pursue an MFA in sculpture. While her mind was flooded with new possibilities and directions for her work, Paniagua’s body began signaling her to stop.
“I started to get sick. Very sick,” she said. “As heart transplant patients, we know that things can go wrong with our transplant at any moment, but also one day we will need yet another organ.”
Paniagua knew she needed a new heart, but she pushed through grueling treatments and the insertion of a pacemaker in the hopes of finishing her MFA. Rather than moving forward with her new degree, though, Paniagua was forced to rest for a year as her body fervently continued to reject her heart. Despite the challenges of that year, now an adult, her new transplant team seemed more optimistic about her future endeavors.
“They gave me the green light to become a doctor, so nothing was going to stop me this time,” she said.
Though her art career had launched in a way she never had expected, growing up in and out of the hospital, Paniagua was most passionate about providing care to patients in similar situations to her.
When I completed orientation week on campus and met my fellow Postbac classmates, I wrote in my journal, ‘I finally found my people.'
She applied to the Postbac Premed Program at Columbia University and was still in the haze of her treatment when she learned that she had been accepted. From the day she received her acceptance to now, Paniagua has known that the Postbac Premed Program is exactly where she needed to be.
“When I completed orientation week on campus and met my fellow Postbac classmates, I wrote in my journal, ‘I finally found my people,'" she said.
During Spring 2021, Paniagua worked to complete her academic requirements while recovering from her second heart transplant in Nashville.
“My disability is not the traditional disability most people think of, and other institutions have had major difficulty grasping just how much my life is controlled by my health. Every dean in the Program has gone above and beyond when it came to helping or even just sending a letter of encouragement,” she said.
After recovering, Paniagua plans to apply to medical school and to, perhaps, pursue a terminal degree in narrative medicine, a subject introduced to her at Columbia.
“I hope to become a doctor but still intend to tackle problems that exist in the transplant world,” she said. “Whenever I come up with an idea and wonder who I can talk to for advice, help, or maybe a foot in the door, I can look to Postbac Premed alums. It's that type of support that makes everything so worth it.”