Rustington couple say ‘thank you’ to life-saving staff

The Rustington couple held a fund-raising evening at the Maltravers Social Club, Littlehampton, as a way of saying thank-you to Harefield Hospital, in Middlesex, where Bob, 65, had his heart transplant 13 years ago.

In just one evening earlier this month, £1,400 was contributed by the 140 people attending for a new MRI scanner at Harefield, the hospital where heart transplants were pioneered in this country.

Now Bob, 65, one of the country’s longest-surviving heart transplant patients, has spoken to the Gazette about his life-giving operation and the donor whose mother he has since met.

He was just 32 when he had his first heart attack, the beginning of a run of ill-health which would lead to him retiring in his early 40s.

The next nine years were lived in fairly constant pain and in 1987 he had a second bypass operation at the hospital.

But he and the doctors knew that what he really needed was a new heart, and in 1997 he was put on the transplant list.

For the next 14 months Bob lived with a bleeper to alert him if a suitable heart had become available, with one or two false alarms along the way.

Then the real call came, in the middle of the night, and at daybreak on that March morning in 1998, he and Carol got into their car and drove to Harefield.

Carol recalls: “It wasn’t until I kissed him and saw him go through the doors to the operating theatre that I realised it could have been the last time I saw him alive – but we had no option, without the operation he would have died, anyway.”

Despite complications during the surgery, Bob made a good recovery and was up and walking within two weeks and back home six weeks after the operation.

“Within three months I was back to what was ‘normal’ for me,” said Bob.

It was certainly a new lease of life for Bob, whose parents both died young from heart complaints and whose son had a heart attack at the age of 42.

Shortly after his transplant, Bob wrote a letter to the donor’s family – their identity is kept secret unless they wish to be in touch with the patient who has received an organ.

His letter was passed on and, to his surprise, he received a phone call from the mother of his donor, a young man who had died from a brain haemorrhage in his 30s.

They arranged to meet, and the date turned out to be a year to the day after Bob had his surgery.

“It was very emotional to start with, but as I talked to her, she was so giving and warm. She had brought photos of Stephen with her,” said Bob.

Carol added: “She said it was what Stephen would have wanted.

“She lost everything. He was her only son and lived with her. It was a very generous act.”

The couple are understandably enthusiastic supporters of the organ donor registration scheme and would like to see the government introduce the “opt-out” rule, so that it is automatically presumed someone is willing to donate their organs unless they sign a form choosing not to.