Heart patient without A pulse awaits transplant
Jimmy Sullivan, 61, has an enlarged heart and no pulse — and hasn’t felt this good in years.
A commercial fisherman from a hamlet in Newfoundland and Labrador, Sullivan is a patient at the Ottawa Heart Institute and a kind of willing prisoner on the grounds of the Civic campus, unable to stray more than two hours away.
In February, in preparation for an eventual heart transplant, Sullivan was equipped with a $150,000 device called a left ventricular assist device, or LVAD, a mechanical pumping system that takes over much of the work of his damaged heart.
“I can walk for hours now, 100 per cent improvement,” he said one day last week. “Before I came here, I couldn’t walk across the floor without stopping to get a breath.”
His wife Michelle, 61, agrees. “Totally different man.”
It is a serious piece of equipment that requires open-heart surgery: a small pump is actually inserted in the left ventricle but its operation is monitored by a “controller” that sits in a pouch around the waist. It doesn’t work in pulses, like a natural heart, but provides a continuous flow of blood at the correct rate.
It operates on an eight-hour battery — also on the belt — with a bunch of backups, even a spare controller, and is worn 24 hours a day, even spending the night between them on the bed.
Sullivan found out one day this week he’s been upgraded to the official transplant list, meaning he’ll undergo the operation as soon as a suitable heart is available. He called home right away and spoke to his 90-year-old mother, Ida, joking he’d been “drafted,” just like the NHL kids looking for a big break.
(He is a humble man — with an accent that requires subtitles — and supplied with assorted delightful expressions: “It’s just the same as wiping your nose,” he said of doing maintenance on the LVAD, or, “I can’t pick one up off the floor,” he said of his ability with a musical instrument.)
The heart institute, because it does roughly 35 transplants a year, is a magnet for Newfoundlanders, who have no transplant centre on the island.
He and Michelle, who live on the 12th floor of a highrise at the Civic, meet with a number of other Newfies every Sunday night at Tim’s at the hospital — “the union meeting,” they call it.
Then there’s family. Jimmy is one of 17 children, several of whom have come to visit since, and has his own four children, who come when they can. “We’re busier here than we are at home,” he says of his heart vigil, now coming on five months.
He fished back home, just like his father Thomas. Inshore for cod, then 150 kilometres offshore for crab, hauling a string of pots from the seabed, 200 metres below. When the going was good, they’d fish for 24 to 36 hours without taking a break, he said, strenuous seasonal work that took its toll.
In the fall, they’d hunt, in the winter, they took to the bush. Small place? Michelle grew up a few houses away from the Sullivan homestead. In a photo of Calvert, about 70 km south of St. John’s, they can name the boats at the wharf and the occupants of all the salt boxes.
Asked if he gets homesick, Sullivan answered succinctly: “Oh, yeah. Saltwater.”
When he first arrived at the heart institute in February — before the LVAD was implanted — Sullivan said he was reading a piece by popular Newfoundland writer Ed Smith, which spoke of the quality of living, not the length of life. And Smith knew of what he spoke — he died.
Letting the story sink in, Sullivan said he just wanted to make peace with his disease and go home.
The next day a fellow Newfoundlander showed up, a fellow from Corner Brook, who was back in Ottawa for his two-year transplant checkup, living proof there is life with a new heart.
“I walked away from that with a different attitude.”
The head of cardiac surgery at the institute, Dr. Marc Ruel, said between 10 and 20 LVADs are implanted every year in Ottawa, usually to younger patients without too many other complications.
Before I came here, I couldn’t walk across the floor without stopping to get a breath.
Early heart-assist devices tried to replicate the organ’s “pulsing action,” an immensely complicated job, or replace the heart altogether. Instead, an LVAD provides a continuous flow via a rotor set at the right speed.
“We found out the hard way you don’t really need to take the heart out.”
About one-third to one-half of transplant recipients have used an LVAD device, he added, with the mean length of use roughly 300 days.
It is a big step to be put on a transplant list, he explained, because it means the other organs are in good shape and a committee has cleared the patient to receive a heart, of which there aren’t enough to go around. (There are about 40 on Ontario’s wait list.)
So our Jimmy Sullivan, in other words, has cleared one more hurdle. So he walks and waits, Michelle shops for Christmas gifts, goes to garage sales, the couple knowing it could be months — the steady beat of time, without a pulse.
“I’m here for the long haul.”
To contact Kelly Egan, please call 613-726-5896 or email kegan@ postmedia.com Twitter.com/ kellyegancolumn