Patient recovering well

Press, 22 October 1980, Page 4

Patient recovering well

By

KEN COATES,

in London

The New Zealand-born heart transplant recipient, Allan Gay, aged 43, is looking forward to a probable return to his home this week, a changed man. ■ Now taking long walks with ease in the grounds of the Papworth Hospital near Cambridge, Mr Gay says he has recovered from a bone infection in his chest He has been receiving antibiotic treatment. He is due to have a biopsy when surgeons will examine his heart to test for any signs of rejection. If he gets a clearance he is likely to return to his Lambeth (London) home this week. “We will have a quiet celebration,” said his wife, Sheila, who stayed in the hospital nurses’ home to be near her' husband

during the first five weeks after the transplant and then every week-end after that.

Mr Gay was the twelfth patient to receive a donor heart at Papworth and the five-hour operation was done on July 31.

He says it does not bother him in the slightest that he has the heart of a boy r now because he feels sp much better and is looking forward to finding a job and working again. Originally, from Foxton, Mr Gay joined the Post Office as a telegram delivery boy at 15 and later joined the New Zealand Army serving in Malaysia. - He spent' 13 years in the British Army and it was while he was working for Cable and Wireless as supervisor of telecommunications that he suffered a series of disabling heart attacks.

“I was a cardiac cripple and could hardly struggle out of the chajr,". he said. “There was no hope of surgery and I did not have long to live.” Of the 13 Papworth' Hospital transplant patients given new hearts by the surgeon, Mr Terence English, since January 1979, six haye died.

The recipient who has lived longest is Mr Keith ; Castle, formerly a builder who received his new heart a year ago.* .’Air; J

The other hospital ilq i Britain where heart plants.are,being done is at : Harefield Hospital, West London, by the surgeon 4 Mr Margdi Yacouv, who ‘ has done 11 transplants. t The cost of transplants f on suitable patients aged between 15 and 50 wherg’,? there are donors, has estimated . between about, i $43,000 and $45,000. • .' ’