When Sandy Law went for a heart transplant in 1982, it was a procedure fraught not only with uncertainty but controversy. So much so that all of her female cousins, who had the same fatal genetic heart disease, turned it down and later passed away.
Mrs Law herself is now believed to be the oldest living heart transplant patient in the world.
By Bayesian logic at least……
I only had a quad bypass. But I still remember thinking that I was robbing the poor old taxpayer with my government pension instead of just kicking the bucket about when I retired.
As I remember it, they changed the pensions available to us government bureaucrats about then. Being paranoid, I stuck to the old version.
I would go for a bypass if I needed it. At my age I’m not so sure about a donor organ, on the basis that it may deprive a younger person. I would certainly like to live another couple of decades like my parents did, but che sera.
These days transplants are a lot less risky and matching techniques are better so it should be a much easier decision if you are young.
I seem to recall with early heart transplants that they estimated it would give you 5-years of life, which if you were down to nothing is obviously a bit of a Hobson’s Choice.
Survival rates climbed slowly, but erratically as techniques and drugs improved. Steve Syer from Gloucestershire, UK had his heart transplant in 1984 and survived 38½ years until just after his 80th birthday. Clearly the right decision for him, but others making the same choice around the same time barely lived 10-years.
There was also the factor of pain, recovery and the later stages of organ failure to consider, so you might buy some time, but at a heavy cost.
Not as black-and-white as it appears 40 years on.
John: you also have to live with your immune system suppressed which leaves you vulnerable to a heap of bother.
How soon before we hear that some poor soul got an organ – or even just a blood transfusion – that gave him lots of spike protein from the Covid jab and thus killed him?
To be fair, TPTB will move heaven and earth to stop us hearing that.