THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, November 18, 1994 TAG: 9411180663
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARIE JOYCE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 112 lines
John Hallowell remembers a gentle tap on the arm that awakened him in the predawn hours of a July morning. It was dark in the hospital room.
The messenger was Peggy Bradshaw, a coordinator for Sentara Norfolk General's heart transplant program. She said, ``John, we have a heart for you.''
Hallowell thought he was still dreaming. Four hours later, he was being wheeled into an operating room.
Thursday night, 4 1/2 months after the surgery, the 21-year-old was wearing a spiffy suit and looking like he had never been sick.
Hallowell attended a party to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Sentara Norfolk General's Heart Transplantation Program. The event brought together 34 of the 66 surviving people who have received a new heart, along with staff members, family and friends. All told, the program, the only one in Hampton Roads, has performed 78 transplants.
The only way to tell the recipients from the other guests was by their name tags, which had green ribbons hanging from them and numbers that marked the order in which the patients received new hearts.
They were a chummy bunch, exchanging handshakes and back-slaps and joking with the staff.
The transplant recipients gather for parties at Christmas and other times during the year. Many attend support group meetings and participate in twice-annual craft shows to raise money for those who have trouble paying for their anti-rejection medicine.
Sitting together were Shirley Scott - transplant No. 28 - and Mary Bageant - No. 31. They became fast friends in spring 1991, when they were recovering from the surgery.
Scott, 62, suffered from a virus that weakened her heart. She remembers the terrifying time when she couldn't walk more than a few steps without stopping to rest. She was too weak even to hold a telephone receiver to her ear.
Bageant, 47, doesn't like talking about the months she wore a device that would shock her heart back into motion when it started to give out. Once, she was drying her hair when a powerful jolt shot through her, causing her to fling the hair dryer and leap back several feet.
The transplant recipients talked of common experiences, like how much they hate the regular biopsies, done to check that the body isn't rejecting the heart. They spoke of difficulties with the anti-rejection medicine, which can cause nausea and other side effects. The medicine costs $1,000 a month; they'll have to take it for the rest of their lives or their bodies will reject the donor hearts.
Suddenly, Scott snapped to attention. ``Hey, it's 6 o'clock,'' she said to her friend. ``Got to take the 6 o'clock medicine.''
She pulled a plastic tube out of her pocketbook and poured five tablets into her hand - three to prevent rejection, one to control cholesterol, one to save her stomach from the effects of all the other medicine.
They also talked about the joy they felt at regaining their health after being so sick.
``I woke up on Valentine's Day, and I had a heart,'' said Linda Fellers, the 68th recipient.
It was harder to talk about the donors.
Each of them got a new heart because someone died, and some grieving family member had to give permission to donate the organs within a few hours of the death.
``I thank God for them,'' said Scott. Like the other recipients, she will never be told who the donor was. ``Can you imagine how hard it is for (the family) to say `Yes'?'' Her pocketbook slipped from her hands and slid to the floor. Talking about it usually makes her eyes tear up and her hands shake.
Donors were an invisible presence during the commemoration ceremony, as one after another of the recipients came forward to receive a scroll and a pin. In the background, a video screen showed scenes from this summer's Transplant Games in Atlanta.
Fellers crossed the stage just as the video showed her tossing a bowling ball down a lane. The crowd laughed and applauded.
There was also applause for a beaming Nina Proctor, the most recent person to join their ranks. Proctor got her new heart just two weeks ago.
Recipient Dan Ballard talked about the need to encourage others to agree to have their organs donated when they die.
Ballard, who has been working on an advertising campaign to urge donations, said the job is difficult because people don't like to confront their own mortality.
``Our society is not, unfortunately, one that looks at death,'' he said.
As the crowd gathered around the food table after the ceremony, two people lay awaiting donors in the hospital's third-floor cardiac care unit, said Dr. Glenn Barnhart, co-director of the program. Fourteen others are waiting at home. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
CHRISTOPHER REDDICK/Staff
Thirty-four of the 66 surviving heart-transplant recipients came
together to celebrate the Norfolk Sentara General Hospital Heart
Transplant Program's five-year anniversary. The hospital has
performed 78 transplants in five years.
Marilyn Dixon, left, pins a ribbon on Mary Bageant, marking her as
the 31st heart-transplant recipient. Catherine Lamb, No. 37, looks
on. Dixon didn't receive a heart, but a now-deceased sister of hers
did.
Graphic
TRANSPLANT FACTS
Seventy-eight people have had heart transplants at Sentara
Norfolk General Hospital
Twenty-seven patients have died while waiting for hearts.
The average length of time a Sentara Norfolk General patient
waited for a heart was 79 days.
Nationwide, 2,299 heart tranplants were performed last year.
by CNB