GIRL LIVED WITH NO HEART

U.S. teen lives 118 days without heart.

14-year-old D'Zhana Simmons,An American teen-ager survived for nearly four months without a heart, kept alive by a custom-built artificial blood-pumping device, until she was able to have a heart transplant, doctors in Miami said on Wednesday.

During those long days D'Zhana Simmons was awake - even walking around at times - with a blinking photocopier-size ventricular assist device attached to her chest to pump and cleanse her blood.

"It was like I was a fake person, like I didn't really exist. I was just here," she said at her triumphant press conference at Holtz Children's Hospital in Miami. "But I know that I really was here.