ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, February 7, 1996 TAG: 9602070026
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
Charlie Rozier of Roanoke County sat up in his bed at Duke University Medical Center on Tuesday morning and ate raspberry gelatin. It wasn't the first time he'd had the dessert in the 24 weeks he's been in the Durham, N.C., hospital, but it was the first day that he'd had gelatin and a future.
After 10 years of heart problems - the past year in heart failure - Rozier has a new heart, installed in a nine-hour operation late Monday.
"I told him he looked gorgeous, but he thought he looked swollen," said Rozier's wife, Ann.
"But he's grinning."
Ann Rozier has been away from her work as a real estate agent with Owens & Co. since Aug. 28, when she drove her husband to Duke for a medical evaluation and learned he was too sick to return home.
Rozier, 51, a land surveyor with the U.S. Forest Service, was put on the heart-transplant waiting list in September. By Christmas, when the Roziers were featured in a newspaper story on the need for transplant donors, he had made it to the No.1 spot. Then, at 1 a.m. Monday, one of his doctors phoned and said Rozier "probably had a heart."
It took almost 12 hours for medical workers to determine that the donor heart could be a match for Rozier. Tissue from the potential donor in Wilmington, N.C., had to be flown to Durham and cross-matched with Rozier's tissue. Rozier carries an antibody that places him at a greater-than-average risk for organ rejection, so the match needed to be quite close, Ann Rozier said.
By 1 p.m. Monday, the word was go. Less than 24 hours later, Rozier was off the respirator. He could get out of intensive care as early as today and out of the hospital in a week.
The transplant is not a quick fix, though.
"We're full of joy and happy and elated, but we know there's another side of this that is not so joyful," Ann Rozier said. "The antibody problem can rear its head at any point. We're entering into a mountain of medications."
The drugs Charlie Rozier must take to keep his body from rejecting the heart also will make him sensitive to infections. He will have to endure biopsies on his heart for months as doctors watch for signs of rejection.
Twelve heart transplants were done at Duke while the Roziers waited, and several of the recipients died, Ann Rozier said.
"But even though you have that very sad side of it, at least they've had a choice. My husband has a chance at a new life," she said. "I'm on such a high, I'd have to break out the champagne to get any higher."
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