For more than 3 years I had been seeing doctors in our home town who were treating me for asthma. In September of 1995, the doctor said I had CHF. This same doctor told my sister that she should not be so upset over my health since I was going to die and nothing could be done to stop it. Needless to say, I told him I was going to go to a real heart doctor and I never went back to that doctor again.
September 19, 1995, I went to Kansas City and saw Doctor Akin. He admitted me to Independence Regional Medical Center for a cath. I was in the hospital until September 26. Doctor Akin told my family that I had maybe 6 months left without transplant and he sent me to see Dr. Porter.
A week later, Dr. Porter sent me to St. Luke's for my heart transplant evaluation.
I was very weak and I had to go to Kansas City in December and stay with my mother and sister to be close to St. Luke's Hospital - the heart transplant center - in case the weather turned bad. I stayed about 10 days. On December 16, I called my son and told him I wanted to go home. He drove me home that night, and we got home about 1:00 AM. I went to bed at about 2:00 AM.
At 4: in the morning the phone rang. It was the transplant coordinator at St. Luke's, saying they might have a heart for me and asking me how soon I could get there. I told her about 2-1/2 to 3 hours, so she told me to get moving! I made a couple of phone calls, and woke my son who was spending the night with us. He got his 3 year old son in the car and drove us all the way to St. Luke's.
We got there around 7:00 AM and by 10:00 AM I had a "new" heart. It was December 17, 1995. I have had no problems so far. I just can't find the right words to thank the family of my donor enough for what they have done for me, after just losing a loved one of their own.
I spent 10 days in the hospital and came home the day after Christmas. This was the very first Christmas that I had not been able to spend with my husband because he was down with the flu and would not come to the hospital for fear of giving me the bug.
It has now been 6 years 4 months since I had transplant surgery and I am thankful more every day. I only go in for a heart biopsy once a year now. I now have 2 more grandchildren, which makes 8, ranging in age from 18 years to 3 days. We have a 4 year old grandchild we call our miracle baby. My oldest daughter had a son and had wanted a little girl for many years.
She became pregnant and when she was 4 months along, doctors found a tumor on one of her ovaries and it was cancer. They were able to remove the ovary and she carried the baby to full-term. This miracle baby was born January 14, 1998. Two weeks later they did a complete hysterectomy on my daughter. They got all the cancer and now she is fine and she has her baby girl! If not for the pregnancy causing regular check-ups, they would probably not have found the cancer in time to save my daughter, so that is why we call this liitle granddaughter our miracle baby.
I am so grateful I was able to be there for her at that time. I have so much to be grateful to my donor and their family for. I told one of the nurses while I was in Saint Luke's after my transplant that one of the things I really wanted was to see my older brother, whom I had not seen for many years, one more time. In 1996 he contacted the family after many years apart and we had him with us for just over a year. He died of a heart attack just 2 weeks before his 59th birthday, which was the day before my granddaughter was born. We were so grateful to have had this time with him.
| 200mg Neoral | Daily |
| 2mg prednisone | Daily |
| 50mg Imuran | Daily |
| 120mg diltiazem | Daily |
| 20mg Zocor | Daily |
| 325mg aspirin | Daily |
Two of our children live close to us but Barbara and 3 of our grandchildren live out in Huntington Beach, California. My husband was born in California and we lived there until 1989, when we moved to Misouri. We are close to Truman Dam in the Ozarks. My hobbies are fishing, crocheting, and ceramics. I crochet mostly doll dresses and afgans.
In 1999, they found cancer on my voice box, for which I had 37 radiation treatments. So far everything is good except that my voice is kind of weak and sometimes my husband can't hear me, but hey, I'm grateful just to be around. Most people have trouble hearing me.
Janice - May 8, 2002
All information on this site is opinion only. All concepts, explanations, trials, and studies have been re-written in plain English and may contain errors. No one here is a doctor. No information on this page should be used by any person to affect their medical, legal, educational, social, or psychological treatment in any way. This web site and all its pages copyright © 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 Jon C.