Source: The Statesman
When Ron Murray pedals his bicycle around Lady Bird Lake, he carries with him the heart of another Austin man.That heart, transplanted into Murray in August, pushes him up hills, past sparkling water and around runners. The spirit of Kevin Underhill, the man who gave Murray that new heart, pushes him, too.
Underhill died Aug. 16, three days after crashing in his first bike race at the Driveway Austin Thursday Night Race Series. His death stunned the cycling community and saddened area rock climbers, who knew him as a veteran athlete who helped out those just learning the sport.
But in a way the heart has stayed where it's long been - in a body that's constantly in motion. Underhill once climbed and ran and cycled; Murray sails, snowboards and hang glides. "This heart loves to beat," says Murray, a 67-year-old financial adviser, as gravel crunches beneath bike tires. "I can just tell. It's a drum." `I was losing life'
Murray always prided himself on staying in shape. He loved feeling his muscles work. He raced sailboats, soared on a hang glider and parachuted out of airplanes. When he wasn't challenging himself physically, he was immersed in jazz-rock music, singing or playing keyboards, guitar or harmonica.
Four years ago, doctors warned him he was developing ischemic cardiomyopathy, a type of heart disease in which the heart muscle progressively weakens. He tried to ramp up his exercise and improve his diet, and he started taking Lipitor. Still, his condition worsened.
His brother was experiencing heart problems at the same time, but otherwise he had no family history of heart disease. He continued to sail but started losing momentum. Eventually even just walking left him gasping for breath. n July 2007, he had just returned from a sailboat race on Lake Travis when he got a weird feeling. "It felt like someone poured a warm quart of 30-weight oil in my chest," he says. "It was a creamy, queasy sensation." When it happened again a few days later, the Air Force veteran made an appointment at the veterans clinic. That night, he woke up and knew he was having a heart attack. He called 911, unlocked the door and waited, terrified he might die. An ambulance rushed him to what was then Brackenridge Hospital. Doctors installed a stent, a tiny device that props open constricted blood vessels. In the following months, another stent, a defibrillator and pacemaker were put in. Still, the single father of a grown daughter grew sicker.
The pumping efficiency of a healthy heart is about 60 to 70 percent. Murray's heart was pumping at just 10 to 15 percent, says his cardiologist, Dr. Scott Blois. In December 2008, Blois told Murray he needed a new heart. Murray wanted to try alternatives first, from supplements to a procedure not approved in the United States. In January 2009, he spent $50,000 to travel to Bangkok for an autologous stem cell transplant, in which his own stem cells were reinjected into his heart to initiate the growth of new tissue. It didn't work. "I was losing life, but it was so imperceptibly slow I didn't notice," Murray says.
In July, Murray was placed on the transplant list. Blois gave him four or five months to live. `He'd push himself'
For weeks last summer, Kevin Underhill, 40, watched cyclists in the popular Driveway race series, which draws hundreds of cyclists from across the state, whirl past in a blur of Spandex and spinning wheels. On Aug. 13, he decided to try it himself. A few laps into the race, held on a twisting track east of U.S. 183, he apparently crossed wheels with another cyclist and was thrown to the ground. Even though he was wearing a helmet, he suffered critical head injuries. He was taken by ambulance to Brackenridge, where He underwent surgery. He was removed from life support and died Aug. 16. Underhill's mother, who didn't want her name used to protect her privacy, remembers her son as resourceful and independent. As a teenager he bicycled through Germany. After graduating from the California Institute of Technology with a master's degree in 1990, he took a job as an engineer at National Instruments in Austin. When the company went public in 1998, he retired. He wasn't rich but was frugal enough that he traveled around the world - mostly by bike. He pedaled and hiked solo through Alaska, Peru, Ecuador, Mexico, Europe and Japan.
Underhill was known for his careful reuse of things. When he wore holes in the knees of his travel pants with zip-off bottoms, he reversed them and switched legs so the holes were in the back. He drove an old pickup but often pedaled the 27 miles from his North Austin home to the South Austin home of his girlfriend, Lisa Meng. "He'd push himself to see how far he could get by without using a car," Meng says. The couple met through friends in 2004. They climbed together, and he helped her train for the Danskin Women's Triathlon last year. He wrote her workout schedule and trailed her with a foam "noodle" in case she got tired as they swam in Lake Travis. They'd even talked about organ donation, when Meng registered as a donor about two years ago. (Underhill was not registered, but his family initiated the donation of his organs.)
The transplant
Three weeks after Murray was placed on the transplant list - much sooner than the typical six- to 24-month wait - he got the call. A heart was waiting.
Hearts are matched based on blood type and other markers of immunological compatibility. Local matches are best; the less time a heart spends outside a body, the better. Transplants also work better when the donor and recipient are of similar size. Underhill was 6 feet 2 inches and 170 pounds; Murray is 6 feet 3 inches and 200 pounds. Heart transplant patients have a 90 percent survival rate one year after surgery and a 65 to 75 percent survival rate five years out. Even so, a good outcome wasn't guaranteed.
Murray drove himself to Seton Medical Center, calling friends and his daughter in California on the way. At the hospital, he was immediately prepped for surgery by Dr. Mark Felger. "I wasn't scared. I don't have that kind of fear," Murray says. "I knew it was going to be a success." When Murray woke up, he immediately felt better. He was flooded with vivid memories and unfinished dreams every time he slept. He'd written a piece of music in the weeks before the surgery. It played in his head as he lay in bed, reflecting on what he'd been through, planning his new life and grieving for the donor. Lyrics to that music fell easily into his mind.
An easy decision
Underhill's mother says she hopes her son's story inspires others to register to donate. She says the decision to donate her son's organs gave her relief at a time of great sadness. "To realize, my God, that he wanted to do it and I'm able to give my word so he can …" she says. "It wasn't a hard decision at all. It was the easiest decision in my life." Her decision saved four people. Murray received Underhill's heart, and three other men received his kidneys, pancreas and liver.
They were lucky. About 18 Americans die every day while waiting for an organ transplant, according to the Texas Organ Sharing Alliance
"When a person gets cremated, in a way it's a waste," Underhill's mother says. "My son's soul is with me for the rest of my life. It's the soul that's you. The rest is material, and it can be put to good use."
As a rule, the names of organ donors are kept private. The Underhill and Murray families gave permission for the Texas Organ Sharing Alliance to release their names. While the number of heart transplants done in the United States has stayed stable at 3,500 to 4,000 a year, including 10 to 15 at Seton Medical Center, the number of people who need transplants is growing, says Blois, Murray's cardiologist. "We could do more transplants if we had more donor hearts," he says. "Ron was lucky and got one faster than most people. A lot of people don't last until they get a viable heart."
Meng and Underhill's mother both say the doctors and nurses who treated Underhill were professional and compassionate, working nonstop to try to keep him alive. "I feel like Kevin is a hero," his mother says. "He is a donor."
Awake
Murray was released from the hospital two weeks after surgery. Each day, he swallows 22 pills, a combination of supplements and anti-rejection drugs. So far he's had no serious complications. "I feel like I've been asleep for four or five years, and I'm completely awake now," Murray said three weeks after surgery. Most of the costs of the transplant were covered by Medicare. He says he was able to cover remaining costs that fell to him.
Two weeks after the operation, he attended a Westlake High School football game, a long-standing tradition among friends he's known since his daughter went to school there. He started playing music again. In March, doctors gave him the go-ahead to travel Murray is still a little weak, but he's sailing again. He works out with a trainer in a cardiac rehab program. And he thinks about Underhill. "A little piece of me still thinks a little piece of him is alive," Murray says. "Since I've gotten out of the hospital I've accepted (the heart) as a very valuable gift, and it's to be appreciated and revered and respected."
Murray wasn't a registered donor when he got sick, but he is now. (He can't donate his new heart, but he can donate other organs.) He wants others to register.
With that in mind, he encouraged people who attended a small gig he played recently at the Mean Eyed Cat to sign donor cards. He wants to do more performances, maybe letting people who register as donors skip the cover charge. "I have to do this," he says. "I'm making it my business to get more donors."
More than a heart
People ask Murray all the time how it feels to have another person's heart beat in his chest. The question, he says, misses the point. "It is my heart … everything about me is alive, beginning with the heart. It's not a heart I share with Kevin Underhill, it is the life that came with it and the miraculous and pure generosity of it - that's what I share with him." Few days go by that he doesn't remember Underhill. "With the help of lots of other good hearts, what a fantastic thing he and I are doing."
How to help
April is Donate Life month. To register as an organ donor, go to www.donatelifetexas.org. Tell family members your intentions. Even if you have signed a donor card, they will make the final decision.
0 COMMENTS:
Post a Comment