BEAUMONT: Man looking forward to life after transplant
BY ERIN WALDNER
STAFF WRITER
Published: 13 March 2012 09:17 PM
The call — the one that could save his life — came while Russell Martin and his wife ate at Sizzler in Banning.
“It’s time,” yelled out Martin's wife, AuraLee.
“She looked at me and she goes, ‘Grab your stuff, let’s go. Loma Linda called. They have a heart,’” said Martin, 45 of Beaumont.
At 7:30 p.m. Jan. 13, just seven hours after that phone call, Martin was wheeled into an operating room at Loma Linda University Medical Center. By midnight, his new heart was beating in his body.
Martin’s heart transplant was one of only 20 to 30 that Loma Linda performs each year. The hospital performed its first human-to-human heart transplant in 1985. The patient was 4 days old and is still alive.
The new heart opens new opportunities, and lets Martin look forward to activities previously closed to him — even something as simple going to the gym or going for a bike ride.
“I tried to do that when I was actually in heart failure — just to ride around our park — and I couldn’t even ride up this slight little incline,” Martin said.
On Monday, Martin went to a Clippers game at Staples Center with his dad, who drove.
Martin’s surgeon said there is no reason Martin can’t lead a normal life, unlike before the transplant.
“He was literally living an hour or day at a time,” said Dr. Anees Razzouk, chief of cardiothoracic surgery at Loma Linda UniversityMedical Center. “This gives him hope for long term.”
THE JOURNEY
Martin was born with third-degree atrioventricular block.
“It means that the top chamber was beating 2:1 to the bottom,” Martin explained. “And I had a slow heartbeat. … I also had mitral valve prolapse” — when a heart valve does not close properly.
Despite all these medical issues, Martin said he lived a normal life until age 43, when he was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. The left side of his heart started giving out.
He was incredibly tired all the time. He would have to take a nap after working just half a day at a cement business in Cabazon. He experienced shortness of breath, to the point where he couldn’t walk a block without feeling out of breath, and his legs were swollen.
Martin received a pacemaker defibrillator and was placed on medication. His symptoms got better, but he relapsed in 2011 and was hospitalized.
When Razzouk, who has performed on assisted in more than 300 heart transplants, met him and saw pictures of his heart, he was amazed Martin was able to function at all.
“He was living on a few extra heartbeats and not much reserve,” Razzouk said.
Martin underwent surgery in October to implant a mechanical pump called a left ventricular assist device, or LVAD. The pump basically replaced the left side of his heart.
The LVAD also gave his other organs time to rejuvenate. Martin’s lungs were very congested, a byproduct of heart failure. In fact, Razzouk said that initially Martin was not a candidate for a new heart because the pressure in his lungs was extremely high.
The pump, however, was a stopgap. It would keep him alive while he waited for a new heart.
Razzouk, who inserted the pump in Martin, said people have lived as many as seven years with the device. Former Vice President Dick Cheney has had one for two years.
Martin said he had more energy after he got the LVAD. But doctors also told him the right side of his heart was then starting to fail.
About 20 to 30 percent of people die while waiting for a new heart, according to Razzouk. Martin was placed on the transplant list in December. The Martins got the call about a match just 21/2 months after he got the LVAD.
“For me, it seemed fast, but there’s actually another guy that lives here in Banning that went through the same thing,” Martin said.
That man is Richard Hess, who received a new heart about eight months ago.
Martin said it’s nice having Hess to turn to with questions.
“We started walking together. We’re becoming friends. We can share stories,” Martin said. It was Hess and his wife whom Russell and AuraLee Martin were having lunch with when the call came from the transplant team.
Martin does not know much about his heart donor, except that the person lived in California, was younger than Martin and weighed about 210 pounds.
Martin is writing a thank-you letter that a donor organization will forward to the donor’s family. And if he could say anything to them now?
“I would just tell them that I was very thankful that the person became a donor,” Martin said. “Apparently, the guy wasn’t just a heart donor. He was a heart, kidney and lung donor.
“It’s amazing,” he added.
THE HEART TRANSPLANT
When Martin was on the operating room table, it took four hours to stop the bleeding, which isn’t uncommon.
Martin felt good going into surgery, considering everything.
“Well, I was pretty confident in Loma Linda ’cause they’ve done so many and they’re well-renowned,” Martin said. “But with any surgery, death is involved. I mean, I knew the possibility was there but I wasn’t even looking at that. My whole thing, after I got the call was, ‘Let’s just get it done, get me home, get me healing.’”
Martin was released from the hospital two weeks after surgery.
Two months later, he is well on the road to recovery. He has been checked five times to see if his body is rejecting the heart, and each biopsy came back negative.
“It’s behind us but I think overall in my mind, I’m still kind of concerned,” Martin’s wife said. He’s still going in for tests and biopsies to check that the heart isn’t rejected.
“I think after five of them I can calm down,” she said with a chuckle.
Razzouk said most heart rejections take place within the first six months.
Martin will have to take anti-rejection medicine for the rest of his life, although the dosage will be lowered over time. One side effect is that the medicine makes his hands shake a bit and he feels a little chilly sometimes.
But he has more energy and no longer feels wiped out.
When people find out Martin has a new heart, they commonly ask what it feels like. His answer: “You can’t feel anything. It just makes you feel better.”
Martin said he does feel like he has a new lease on life. He and his wife are hoping to participate in next month’s Temecula ValleyHeart Walk, a benefit for the American Heart Association.
“It’s like my friend Richard said: ‘We’re one of God’s modern miracles,’” he said. “… I thank the Lord for the blessing I have.”
Follow Erin Waldner on Twitter: @PE_ErinWaldne
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