![]() If a heart wasn’t available in the next few days, Sanders would have to choose whether to get an LVAD, a left ventricular assist device, a surgically implanted pump used for patients with end-stage heart failure. ![]() On April 6, after nearly 10 days in the hospital, Sanders got some tough news from his doctor, Abdou. ![]() When patients are on ECMO support, more and serious complications tend to occur, and if a suitable heart is not available after about a week, some difficult decisions need to be made on to how to proceed. Sanders’ priority status was also moved to the top spot on the transplant list. On March 31, his condition deteriorated further, and he was placed on ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation), a long-term “bypass machine” that supports the heart and/or lungs by taking blood out of the body, oxygenating it via an artificial lung, and pumping it back in. The walks had dual benefits: physical stamina and a mental reprieve during a lengthy stay.īut Sanders’ heart was still very sick. I’ll come back and walk with you.’”Īnd wouldn’t you know it - it worked every time. You can lay in that bed all you want, but nothing is going to happen until you start getting up to walk. “I told, ‘Listen, you don’t know me, but I’m going to tell you something. Sanders got other cardiac patients to join him on those walks by stopping into their rooms - and eventually, the spouses and partners of fellow patients were coming to him for help. It wasn’t just his own stamina he was building, either. So, I walked around the nurses’ station every morning because I knew a heart was coming for me.” “I was told by my nurses that every patient has to be physically ready and test well to receive a transplant. Upon arriving, they quickly discovered that his heart was functioning at roughly 10%, so Sanders was put on a temporary mechanical pump – Impella, a device designed to give more support to the heart to allow it to pump more blood with each contraction and the blood to flow more easily.īased on his condition, Sanders was moved up higher on the transplant list. He couldn’t exercise or swim anymore, he had to sleep upright, and he was “back and forth to the hospital” every few months.ĭuring his extended stay in the hospital, Sanders stayed active, mentally and physically, and even rallied other cardiac patients to join him on short walks around the nursing station.Īt the end of March, Sanders had his son drive him to the hospital. Not long after that conversation, Sanders, who was 67 at the time, also started to notice changes. “It didn’t really resonate with me until I got home,” Sanders remembers about that visit, “and after a while I started to tell myself that I had to deal with these issues, that they weren’t going away.” When none of those could keep heart failure at bay, Abdou continued to be candid, and told Sanders he needed a heart transplant. ![]() Interventions ranged from medication to an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator to a pacemaker and beyond. Over the next few years, Abdou was frank - Sanders’ heart wasn’t functioning as it should be, but they would try all available treatments. Abdou, MD, an Emory cardiologist, by his primary physician. If it wasn’t for the heart transplant, there’s a good chance William Sanders wouldn’t have gotten married this fall.īack in 2018, Sanders had been referred to Mahmoud H.
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