I received another man’s heart

NST: The doctors gave him six months to live after he suffered a heart attack. Albert Gunaratnam looked at his two teenage daughters and vowed to see them through adulthood. Eight years later, the longest living heart transplant patient in Malaysia talks to K.P. WARAN and ANNIE FREEDA CRUEZ about his life.

ALBERT Gunaratnam clutched his chest as the pain became unbearable despite the medication prescribed by the doctors, and looked at his wife who was standing at a corner of the hospital ward talking to a man in a white overcoat.
He saw her wiping away a tear. Focusing on the face of the man who was adjusting the stethoscope around his neck, he could make out the words the man was mouthing: "I’m sorry, his chances are very slim."
Gunaratnam knew what those "words" meant — he was dying.
His wife, Terry Nelson, walked to his bedside and held his hands, tears streaming down her face.
Gunaratnam clutched her hands, closed his eyes and prayed. "God, I have so many commitments. I want to see my daughters grow up. Don’t take my life."
He patted Terry’s hands and said: "Don’t worry, I am not leaving you. And tell Jacinta and Cynthia that Pappa will be all right." His condition continued to deteriorate over the following months, making routine chores such as brushing teeth a difficult task.
"I could neither walk nor stand. Breathing became something I had to concentrate on. At one point I could only sleep sitting up, drifting off for a few minutes and waking up to catch my breath," he said.
But that was then. At the National Heart Institute recently, a hale and hearty Gunaratnam looked into Terry’s eyes and said: "I would not have made it without your support. You were there every inch of the way ... the children, too."
Terry broke into a wide smile, ran her hands through his white hair and gave him a hug. She was lost for words.
Terry said she owed her husband’s life to a mother’s decision eight years ago to allow the heart of her 21-year-old son who was killed in an road accident to be transplanted. That transplanted heart saved Gunaratnam’s life.
Gunaratnam remembers Feb 17, 1996, when he woke up at 5am with a throbbing pain in his arm and chest. He paced the room, drank some water and tried to get back to sleep, hoping the discomfort would go away.
At 7am, as his wife was about to drive their daughter to a clinic, Gunaratnam told her to wait, got dressed and got into the car. At the clinic, the doctor told him he was having a heart attack and he was rushed to a private hospital.
There he learnt that the heart attack had damaged major muscles of his heart. His heartbeat was barely audible, he had at most six months to live and a transplant might be the only way to prolong his life.
Taking a daily dosage of carvidolol and medication to help against blood clotting, Gunaratnam survived. From 81.81kg, he shrank to just 58kg.
In September 1997, suffering from an abnormal heart rhythm, he was warded at University Malaya Medical Centre where he had to undergo electric shock treatment to rectify the problem.
In January 1998, he went to the Madras Medical Mission in Chennai, India, in the hope of getting a heart transplant.
After a series of tests, they told him that with an AB positive blood group, it would be difficult to get a donor. He was asked to return to Malaysia and wait for a call.
In the meantime, history had already been made in Malaysia. On Dec 18, 1997, the National Heart Institute successfully carried out its first heart transplant on R. Sathrugnam.
Gunaratnam registered as a potential recipient with IJN in March 1998, but he didn’t have to wait long.
On April 9, a tearful Terry called him at the office to relay the news that a donor had been found.
IJN heart transplant co-ordinator S. Ramayee said the donor was an ex-state athlete who had been in a motorcycle accident in Ipoh.
Despite objections from other relatives, the mother allowed his heart and other organs to be harvested for transplant.
"The mother said that the youth had read about Sathrugnam’s heart transplant, and had said he could not see why people were making a big fuss about organ donations. He told her that if anything should happen to him, then all his organs should be offered for transplant.
"Furthermore, his blood type was AB positive and Gunaratnam was the only compatible recipient on the list," said Ramayee.
Escorted by police outriders, the heart arrived at IJN by road at 3am on April 10. It had been harvested from the brain- dead youth at 10.30pm the previous day.
The transplant procedure began at 3.15am, led by Tan Sri Yahya Awang and Datuk Dr Ahmad Salahuddin. And at 6.30am Gunaratnam was transferred to the intensive care unit.
When he opened his eyes and saw the nurses and his wife, he made a strange request: he wanted rice with rasam (Indian soup) and fried fish. He was on a liquid diet for that day and got to eat his rice, rasam and fish the next day.
"I am thankful to colleagues at UMW Toyota who not only visited me but also sent my children to school, did household chores and helped me with hospital visits," he said.
Today, Gunaratnam, Terry and their children are involved in seminars and campaigns on organ transplants, travelling and talking to the public and also giving encouragement and confidence to would-be recipients.
"Many people take the daily things that they do for granted. I have been through it all... from the brink of death to the eight years now that I had spent with my family and friends.
"This precious gift came about because of a kind woman who, despite her grief, decided to make the sacrifice of donating her son’s organs so others could live. We need more such people."
The donor’s cornea, kidneys and bones were also transplanted into other patients while the healthy valves in Gunaratnam’s damaged heart were removed and transplanted in others.
As providence would have it, Gunaratnam met the donor’s family at a transplant seminar one day. Last year, he was invited to the donor’s sister’s wedding in Teluk Intan.
"We did not talk about the donor or the transplant as it was a happy occasion. As we took leave, the mother told Terry to take good care of me," said Gunaratnam. "The young man’s heart lives on in me."