She Tested the Boundaries of Medical Science: Teresa Carter on Jazzy, Faith & the Jazzy Hearts Foundation

Teresa Carter is the founder of Jazzy Hearts Foundation, which she and her husband started to honor their youngest daughter, Jazzy. Jazzy was diagnosed with restrictive cardiomyopathy as a baby, received a heart transplant, and passed away in 2023 from complications after the transplant. Teresa and Logan first met when she came to the first NOTWORKING event, and she opened this conversation with a prayer. It's one of the most moving episodes Your Morning Drive has recorded.

From Southern California to a Captain D's drive-thru

Teresa grew up in Southern California in a single-parent home with her mom and younger sister, and the family moved to Cartersville on her 13th birthday in October 2003. Coming from big cities with buses and sidewalks, she remembers looking at all the trees and wondering where her mom had moved them. She met her husband through the drive-thru window at the Captain D's in Cartersville, where he kept coming back on his lunch breaks. They've been together since 2006 and married in 2010. Teresa went to culinary school and worked in restaurants for years, later moved to Shaw so her schedule fit around their two older kids, and started a catering business during COVID. The family now lives in the Euharlee area.

Jazzy's diagnosis

Jazzy, the family's "sweet surprise," was born on January 14, 2021. Early checkups looked normal. Then, on October 29, 2021, she stopped breathing at her early learning center, where staff performed CPR until paramedics arrived. A few days later, at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston, doctors found the cause: restrictive cardiomyopathy, a condition in which the heart's lower chambers can't pump enough blood. It's extremely rare in children, and Jazzy was among the youngest patients her doctors had seen with it. There is no cure. The only option was to list her for a heart transplant and hope she could hold on long enough to receive one.

Defying the odds

The months that followed included a feeding tube, daily therapies, CPR training before Teresa was allowed to take Jazzy home, and more hospital stays. Monitoring eventually showed that Jazzy's breathing episodes were cardiac arrests, and surviving four of them was a miracle in itself. Once that was clear, she couldn't safely leave the hospital. With time running out, her surgeon proposed a Berlin Heart, a ventricular assist device that had never been used there for her diagnosis. He consulted surgeons in other states, and the device kept Jazzy alive while she waited. Teresa calls the stroller walks outside, with nurses pushing the machines alongside, Jazzy's "little mini parade." She received a new heart on March 27, 2022, and did well for about a year and a half. Teresa also learned that four children after Jazzy received the same kind of procedure to help them survive until their own transplants.

Twenty-eight days of perseverance

On August 1, 2023, the evening of the first day of school, Jazzy stopped breathing again. Doctors found cardiac allograft vasculopathy, a narrowing of the arteries around a transplanted heart that usually develops over 10 to 15 years. In Jazzy's case it appeared within months of a clean checkup. She came off full life support when doctors didn't expect her to and lived for nearly four more weeks before passing away on August 28, 2023. Teresa calls that stretch the "28 days of perseverance." She hadn't grown up with faith, but she says Jazzy changed that. During those weeks she prayed constantly, began reading the Bible, and heard from people who returned to church after following Jazzy's story. "Jazzy keeps me grounded," she said. "She's my anchor to God."

Why Jazzy Hearts Foundation exists

Teresa started Jazzy Hearts Foundation on the day the family met with the funeral director. "She couldn't have tested the boundaries of medical science this much and then this is just the end," she said. The foundation raises awareness for congenital heart disease and organ donation and wants to fund pediatric transplant research, especially less invasive ways to detect cardiac allograft vasculopathy earlier than an annual heart catheterization. She also wants to walk alongside families facing the same kind of loss. Teresa credits the people who carried her family through: nurses who cared for her as well as Jazzy, the Ronald McDonald House where her husband and kids stayed on weekends, and teachers and neighbors who brought meals and helped with the older kids.

Listen to the Full Conversation

Teresa also talks about grief showing up at unexpected moments, how she and her husband learned to give each other space, and how their older kids have coped. Every year the family holds Jazzy's Toy Drive around her January birthday, collecting toys from the weekend after Thanksgiving and delivering them to the hospital in late January so kids who spend birthdays or hard days there have something to smile about. "You're bringing joy to the kid, but you're also giving hope to the parents," she said. Learn more and find ways to give at jazzyheartsfoundation.org. Catch the full episode below.