Mark Lindsey held the machine that once kept his heart beating in front of him.
"It's unreal that this thing was in me," the former University football lineman said.
The LVAD machine operated as an artificial left ventricle: While the machine kept his heart alive for the past six months, it also, through a major defect, once leaked substantial amounts of blood, nearly killing him.
Although Mark had his heart transplant surgery only two weeks ago, he has recovered at an extremely rapid rate. Just four days after surgery, he began to walk with extreme difficulty. Now he can walk around the entire hospital without a problem.
"I have paid my dues and can't wait to go home," he said.
"It's the best he's felt in three years," said his mother, Dottie Lindsey.
Mark went home to Richmond Wednesday with his new heart.
The search ends
After he collapsed at a 1996 football practice, Mark was diagnosed with viral cardiomyopathy, an extremely rare disorder in which the immune system programs itself to destroy heart tissue. At the time, his heart was only functioning at 20 percent. An average heart functions at least at 60 percent.
Until Wednesday, Mark hadn't been home in over eight months. He had been on the waiting list for a transplant since December 1997, and has been hospitalized at the University Medical Center since June of last year. Two weeks after his surgery, the long-awaited end was within sight.
Mark's girlfriend, fourth-year College student Catina Newsome, was introducing him to a friend of hers when Dr. John Kern, a cardiopulmonary surgeon at the Medical Center, introduced himself and said, "I think we've found a heart for you."
But Mark and his family knew the heart had to be an age match as well as a size and blood type match.
"If he got a 45-year-old heart, he wouldn't be able to live as long," Dottie Lindsey said.
But then Kern told Mark the donor was 18 years old.
"I really can't argue with that, can I?" he said to Kern.
Then he cried.
"I never thought I'd think about this, but somebody died today ... I was really sad and overjoyed," he said. "The first thing I did was call people I knew."
One of the first calls he made was to his father in Richmond, who immediately headed out to Mark's old University Heights apartment, where he and his wife stayed when visiting Mark.
His mother typically stayed there every weekday, but had been sick with the flu, and had not been in Charlottesville the week before. Even though she still was recovering from the flu, she decided to drive back to Charlottesville.
She hadn't had a chance to talk to her husband, however, and had no idea that a donor had been found.
"When I arrived here and saw my husband's car [parked outside], I was frozen with horror - he saw me and yelled, 'Get into the car, we've gotta go to the hospital.' I burst into tears. I thought something horrible had happened," she said.
But once she heard what had happened, his mother "came into the hospital, crying and smiling," Mark said.
Dottie Lindsey described the experience as bittersweet.
"Because we had come so close to losing a child, we could perhaps put ourselves very close to the place where the donor's [family] has been," she said.
A draining experience
The surgery itself, which lasted for six hours, was an emotionally-draining experience.
It "was a very nerve-wracking, stressful experience ... You're very guarded, on pins and needles not knowing what to expect," Dottie Lindsey said. "Because we've come so close to losing Mark before, it's almost like [we've] learned not to get excited too quickly."
Mark said he was filled with emotions while lying in the operating room waiting for the surgery to begin.
"The surgeon was saying, 'I'm going to be procuring the organ,' and I thought, [the donor] has given me this great gift and I'll never see him,'" he said.
The other patients on waiting lists for heart transplants at the Medical Center have developed a close relationship with Mark. Their waits continue, and their survival depends on receiving an organ in short supply.
"Some of them are my parent's age ... One has a six-year-old child," he said.
"It was a reality check," Dottie Lindsey added. "It was like being on the Titanic and there's only one life preserver. It happened to be thrown to Mark."
"Oh my god, I'm alive"
That, Mark said, was his first thought after waking up from surgery. When he felt the breathing tube in his throat, he was a little upset, but the tube was removed after a few days.
He is now on 18 different medications, most of which are pain pills. He will take most of them in progressively smaller increments over time, until he doesn't have to take them. Two, however, are anti-rejection drugs. He will have to continue taking those for the rest of his life.
"Now that I got this heart I feel eager to get in shape, to work my body and push it to the test ... I love just being able to do something," he said.
In short, he plans to make the most of life: joining his brother's softball team, and just going out for a drive every now and then; to "just do things that people take for granted," he said.
His major long-term priority, however, is graduating from college.
"I'm taking two classes this semester, and will be within 12 credits of graduating then," he said.
He anticipates starting back in a few weeks. He was forced to withdraw from the University last spring, only a few weeks before finals, tortuously close to receiving his degree.
Despite the interruption in schoolwork, Mark said he's happy he made good use of the time he spent in the hospital.
"Instead of sitting here rotting like a vegetable, I learned skills that will stay with me for the rest of my life," he said. "I've learned a new talent and read a lot of books."
Recently, Mark has learned to play the piano, and has done so at an impressively fast rate.
According to his mother, he can even sight-read music now. Most importantly, though, Mark finally is finally able to get on with his life.
"Catina and I haven't had much privacy ... she really wants to go out on a date," he said.
Now that he has been released from the hospital, Mark has already begun his new life.
"Being through here has changed me as a person. I've learned to put God in my life," he said. "I think everything happens for a reason."
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