Heart transplant patient was told he had 10 years to live... 30 years ago!
WHEN Paul Hayman had a heart transplant, he was told he could hope to live for another ten years.
But nearly thirty years later, the organ is still going strong – making him the country’s longest-surviving heart transplant patient.
Mr Hayman, 49, a former electrician, was diagnosed with an enlarged heart at the age of 15 after collapsing during a game of badminton. About five years later he was taken to Papworth Hospital, Cambridge, for a transplant operation carried out by Sir Terence English, the surgeon behind Britain’s first successful heart transplant.
Before the operation in December 1987, Sir Terence told Mr Hayman ‘he would be lucky to see Christmas’ if he did not have the procedure.
The heart was expected to give him ten more years, and he was even told to give up watching his football team Plymouth Argyle as the excitement could kill him.
But after surviving three times longer than predicted, the father-of-two, from Plymouth, said: ‘Getting this heart was the greatest gift anyone in the world could receive. It’s a miracle.’ Mr Hayman, who has two daughters Lucy, 16, and Melissa, 20, added: ‘I didn’t expect to see my daughters grow up. As the years went by, I felt fine.’ He celebrates his 50th birthday in August.
Last year he became the longest-surviving heart transplant patient in the UK following the death of John McCafferty, 73, who had survived for 33 years. Mr Hayman is also living with a donated kidney. He had that transplant after his kidneys started to fail when he was 37.