YORK – Not one, but two York lives were saved in the span of single day this spring in Omaha.
Incredibly, Jim Fox, 63, and 20-year-old Tyson Lewis received heart transplants, one behind the other, on Wednesday, April 18
Fox went under the knife at midnight and was wheeled out with a new heart pumping in his chest about 9:30 a.m. Lewis, he said, followed him into the operating theater an hour and a half later.
The odds of two from the same small town getting the “we have a heart for you” call at the same time got a little help from an unlikely location … Prague in the Czech Republic.
Tim Lewis, Tyson’s dad, said a world conference there left most transplant programs unstaffed and unable to do transplants. Omaha was the exception, so when hearts became available the precious organs naturally gravitated in this direction.
Tyson’s need for a heart traces back to when he contracted cancer in his left leg at age 8. Chemotherapy at that time turned out to be a ticking time bomb. It is blamed for heart failure that came out of the blue for his family two years ago.
Read more: http://www.yorknewstimes.com/news/two-transplants-for-york/article_26ac3e30-a16c-11e1-9031-0019bb2963f4.html
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