WHY I REMEMBER THAT TRANSPLANT
WITH all the hype around the 50th anniversary of the first heart transplant, I have my own story to add to the mix!
On Saturday 2 December 1967, my fiancé, Jeff, and I went to the Wrench Town Bakery in Observatory to order our wedding cake. My dress was adorned with silk daisies – and the cake I wanted was to be a three-tiered creation with daisies cascading down from the top.
When we arrived the staff were disorganised and distracted and hardly able to take down our order. Eventually we were told that two ladies, a mother and her daughter, had just been into the bakery but as they left, in attempting to cross the busy road outside the shop, had been knocked down.
The mother died immediately and the daughter had been taken to Groote Schuur Hospital. It was later that weekend that the news broke that Professor Chris Barnard had performed the world’s first heart transplant and we realised that the people who’d been knocked down were Mrs Darvall and her daughter Denise, the heart donor.
My husband and I are celebrating our own golden anniversary, but I’m afraid my beautiful daisy cake never did take centre stage at our wedding reception.
As a matter of interest, Louis Washkansky, the recipient of the heart, died on the day we got married – 21 December 1967. PADDY HAWTHORNE, CAPE TOWN