Heart Transplant

A little background:

I am a retired law professor from Ohio State University, living in a suburb of Columbus. Age 66. I had a heart transplant the Monday before Thanksgiving.

The whole experience has been like science fiction. It is one thing intellectually to think you are getting a heart transplant sometime in 2010, and quite another to have a morning phone call (I was working at the computer) on Nov. 23: "Mr. Whaley, we have a heart for you." It was the most startling sentence I have ever heard in my life. Of course, the old heart started beating very fast, but by midnight I had a new one. The surgeon who put it in came by days later and told me that when he first saw it, he thought "that is a beautiful heart." A nurse who watched the operation said that the heart they took was so enlarged that it was three times bigger than the heart they put in. I was home and happy eight days later.

So, from being on the verge of dying, I am filled with life again. I have no major health problems suddenly (except healing the wound and watching for signs of rejection). Amazing!

Happy holidays!

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