THE day Fiona Coote dodged death, she woke to the terrifying sight of masked strangers hovering overhead.
“All I could only see was eyes. I had no clue where I was,” she recalls.
“I was ventilated, I couldn’t speak, I was in a foreign place.”
At 14, she had just become the youngest Australian to undergo a heart transplant after falling gravely ill from viral-induced tonsillitis.
Now 44, she’s the longest-surviving heart transplant recipient in the southern hemisphere, and her traumatic memories have been replaced with ones of gratitude.
“Five years was a long time back then. Thirty has been the most wonderful surprise.”
One set of eyes peering from behind a surgical mask belonged to Victor Chang, the renowned surgeon fatally gunned down on a Mosman street in a bungled extortion attempt.
Sitting metres from his portrait in St Vincent’s cardiology wing, Ms Coote remembers the man, not just the celebrated physician.
“He was fun, cheeky, charming. He loved life,” she said.
“He was someone who inspired confidence in all.”
These days, she marvels at how routine and streamlined the once highly dangerous procedure has become.
“We took a risk, and I don’t regret it for a minute,” recalls Dr Phillip Spratt, who watched on as Dr Chang operated.
Now director of the hospital’s transplant unit, he can still remember the pressure of public expectation in 1984 as his teenage patient underwent the operation.
“It was very important we didn’t fail,” he said.
“We didn’t want the press saying this expensive, exotic heart transplantation and they’re not surviving.”
Thirty years on, he says the technology used to avert cardiac illnesses are more efficient than ever.
A new mechanical pump about the size of an acorn is the next step, and he hopes to get a trial up and running at the hospital in the second half of the year.
He hopes that the surgery Ms Coote endured will become redundant
While NSW donation and transplant rates are at an all-time high, NSW Health Minister Jillian Skinner said Australian national organ donor levels still ranked poorly.
* The world s first heart transplant was performed in South Africa in 1967. * The first Australian heart transplant was performed in 1968 at St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney * Heart transplants have been performed regularly in Australia since 1984 * Heart transplant operations usually take three to six hours. * There are two types of heart transplant: Orthotopic transplants are the most common type and involve removing the diseased heart and heterotopic transplant where the donor heart is piggy backed onto the old heart. |
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