But you’ll have to forgive him. He’s been rather busy lately, and his Christmas Wish List was fulfilled two months ago.
“I’m alive,” the 68-year-old said.
On Oct. 31 — and not today, Christmas morning 2015 — Brown received the ultimate gift from an anonymous donor: a healthy heart. Weeks after the transplant, Brown wrote the donor’s family a hand-written, heart-felt, one-page letter. He concluded it something like this: “I will take care of my heart the rest of my life and try to be in the best shape possible.”
He wrote the letter twice, and joked he changed 85 words.
“Boy what a gift I received,” said Brown, a 1965 Middletown High School graduate. “It’s hard to put into words.”
He doesn’t have any difficulty expressing his thanks for his doctors, nurses and those who choose to be organ donors.
“Without donors,” he said, “there are no recipients.”
Without donors, people die, people like Dale Brown.
There are 122,171 people waiting for an organ in the United States, 4,211 needing a heart. In Ohio, there are 3,252 residents waiting for an organ, and 176 of them needing a heart, according to the United Network For Organ Sharing.
Last year in the U.S., there were 29,533 organ transplants and 2,655, or 9 percent, were heart transplants, the agency said.
Brown, who worked at General Motors in Moraine for 30 years, began having cardiac problems 13 years ago when he suffered a heart attack on Sept. 20, 2002. He went to his family doctor because he had flu-like symptoms, but an emergency electrocardiogram revealed he had 100 percent blockage in his arteries. He had one stent that day.
“They didn’t think I’d make it,” said Brown, who eventually had five stents.
Then on Oct. 28, 2013, he received a pacemaker, and on April 4, 2014, he received a Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD), a mechanical heart that pushes oxygen-rich blood through the heart. The device’s computer operates on two 14-volt batteries that had to be changed every 12 hours. For Brown that was 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. The device hung off his right hip and was a constant reminder of his medical condition.
The LVAD either was a life destination or a bridge to a heart transplant, he said. After the procedure, he was hospitalized for 46 days and was released carrying 136 pounds on his 6-foot frame. He wasn’t a pretty picture.
“Almost dead,” was his description. “It was close.”
He was placed on a heart transplant list on July 15, 2015. Before that, there were 300 medical tests that confirmed everything he had told the doctors: besides having a weak heart, he was in good health, was an avid tennis player and had quit smoking and drinking years ago. He was an ideal transplant candidate.
He knew there were risks involved with a heart transplant. While he was told 93 percent of transplant recipients survive the first year, some “never get off the table,” he said.
The reward was worth the risk.
“My heart was going downhill,” he said. “I may not have been here today.”
That all changed on Oct. 30, when Brown and his companion, Ruth Blom, were working outside his Middletown home. She was raking leaves, he was watching from a lawn chair. They never went anywhere without their cell phones waiting to receive a call from the transplant coordinator.
Except on this day.
They left them in the house.
When he went back inside after 30 minutes for a drink of water, he noticed his land line was flashing, and their two cell phones indicated missed calls. That was odd, they thought.
They called the number and it was the transplant team at Ohio State University Medical Center. They were told to gather their items and drive to Columbus. A “possible donor” had be found, they were told.
From Middletown to Columbus, a 100-mile drive Brown has taken countless times since, fear and disbelief filled his thoughts.
“I still don’t believe it,” he said of receiving a heart.
Then he pointed toward his chest. “I have somebody else’s heart.”
He never thought about dying, or not seeing his family again, which he admits now, may seem hard for some people to believe.
He arrived at the hospital at 4 p.m., and was brought into the operating area at 7 p.m. The transplant began at 2:30 a.m. and lasted six hours. The next two days were blurs, he said. When the medical staff asked if he could answer questions, he said, “yes.” Then he answered wrong.
He was hospitalized for 16 days. He was admitted as Robin Dale Brown and released a Man With A New Heart.
Since the transplant, Brown drives to OSU once a week for tests. Eventually, those trips will be every two weeks, then monthly, every four months, every six months, and after five years, annually.
He has cardiac rehabilitation Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings at Atrium Medical Center. Today, he takes 41 pills, a number that will gradually be reduced.
Eventually, and he knows this may not be until next summer, he’d love to play tennis again. He bought New Balance tennis shoes 18 years ago, though they still look new. He recently got them out and they sit near the couch as a daily reminder of the game he still loves.
Brown doesn’t feel sorry for himself. His mother was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis when he was 5, and she didn’t walk after her 24th birthday. She died when she was 60. He knows he feels better than his mother.
He now thinks about his daughter, Michelle, her husband, Mark, and his three granddaughters, Calli, Sofey and Olivia.
“If I could have all of this to do over, I wouldn’t change a thing,” he said. “If I had to pick someone to have a heart transplant, I’d pick me and not them. You get dealt a hand, and though I don’t gamble, this is my hand.”
And his hand has two hearts.
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