Tom, 50, is a lot of things: a devoted husband, doting father, Army First Sergeant, world traveler, and somewhat accident-prone weekend warrior. But he never imagined he would also some day be called "heart transplant survivor".
Just six short years ago, a fall off his bicycle while stationed in Germany would change Tom's life forever. When his face hit the pavement and he broke a tooth, the resulting root canal would trigger a series of events that would ultimately require a heart transplant to save Tom's life.
It was after a family bus trip to Lourdes, France, a few months after the dental surgery, while putting on his Army boots that Tom noticed his ankles were pretty swollen. Figuring the long bus ride had caused it and committing to some extra exercise to reduce the swelling, Tom didn't give it another thought.
Then, a few months later, he developed a cough. Thinking it was just a bad cold, Tom took cough syrup and pain relievers for a couple weeks until the coughing became increasingly violent. His wife, Heidi, a former Army medic, both concerned and annoyed with the incessant coughing, took Tom's blood pressure which turned out to be dangerously low. She dragged him straight to the emergency department at a hospital near the Army base.
After the doctor there told Tom "I think you're pretty sick," he was transferred to Wurzburg University Hospital where his ejection fraction-;a measure of how well his heart is pumping-;was just 15 percent. (The normal range is between 50-60 percent.)
Tom was still unaware of how critically ill he was when he was told the devastating news in an unusually matter-of-fact manner. "The chief professor of cardiology came into my room, looked at me and said, ‘You're sick. You have congestive heart failure and you need a transplant,'" Tom recounts now, laughing. "And then I said, ‘But, Dude, I just have a cold!'"
Later it was learned that Tom had been born with a rare disorder known as non-compaction of the left ventricle which made his heart pump ineffectively.
But now, needing a transplant, Tom discovered he couldn't receive one in Germany since most Army medical staff was in Iraq and, being a foreign patient, his case wasn't urgent enough for the civilian hospital to put him on the transplant list.
He eventually went back to San Antonio with an implanted defibrillator, lots of medication and a new job as a training aide at Brooke Army Medical Center, or BAMC, where medical students used him to learn about treating heart patients.
"The looks I got from those students were precious! My ejection fraction was still around 10 or 15 percent but I was scoring high on the stress tests-;higher than some of the doctors!" Tom said.
Tom had a very weak heart, but his excellent physical condition and the intensive treatment from Dr. Michael Kwan, a board-certified heart failure and transplant cardiologist now with Texas Transplant Physician Group (who had trained at BAMC, and, interestingly, was the Army's transplant cardiologist who was in Iraq when Tom was first diagnosed) allowed Tom to avoid a transplant for about another year.
Finally, a day before Thanksgiving in 2006, Tom got the call from transplant coordinator, Jennifer Hiller, that he would be placed on the transplant waiting list.
"That was scary." The normally lighthearted Tom is suddenly quiet and serious. "That's when I knew they weren't kidding. I had a few emotional moments," he admits, "But I knew it wouldn't happen tomorrow and I would have some time to process it all."
Two days later, wanting to help his wife decorate the house for Christmas, Tom was heading up the ladder with an armful of lights and a staple gun when the ladder suddenly slipped and he ended up on the ground, bruised and scraped but not seriously hurt.
Then, on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, a dreary, rainy day, still scuffed up from the fall, Tom and Heidi were watching a Richard Gere movie called Autumn in New York about a young woman with a fatal heart condition when the phone rang. Without missing a beat his wife quipped, "If that's Jennifer, tell her we're not in the mood for a heart today."
But there was a heart for him. It was a perfect match. And it was just six days after being placed on the waiting list.
(The transplant team was initially mortified when they first saw Tom arrive at the hospital with his scrapes and bumps. When he told them about the ladder incident, they just rolled their eyes and shook their heads.)
The transplant surgery lasted three and a half hours and just six hours later Tom was sitting in a chair. Twenty-four hours after the surgery he was relieved to see a physical therapist come into his room, since the normally active, yet clumsy Tom was anxious to move his legs a bit.
But he wasn't quite prepared for what she had in mind. "God bless that woman!" Tom says, "She showed up with a walker and a strap and told me to get up and walk!"
Six months later Tom wanted to celebrate his wedding anniversary with a special trip with his family. The transplant team was stunned to discover he wanted to go to Mexico and gave him a laundry list of precautions to avoid infection. "The list was so long it could have been a book!" Tom says. Resigned that he was going despite their concern, the staff insisted he bring back photos of the trip.
He did. And they were mortified again to see him swimming in a pool with dolphins. "The germs!" they gasped.
But Tom was fine…so fine, in fact, that he had climbed to the top of the tallest Mayan pyramid and gone snorkeling through caves around the Yucatán Peninsula.
Since his transplant, Tom is doing even better. "I feel better now than before I got sick. Maybe the heart murmur had some side effects that I just gotten used to. I haven't been working out much this winter so I'm up about five pounds, but I'll get active again. I'm up for everything. It's an amazing feeling."
Still, reminiscing about the time he was sick, Tom regrets how much his heart condition has cost his family. "It was the worst on my daughter. She lost her hiking buddy. I couldn't even go up the stairs to say good night to her. My wife lost the guy who worked around the house. All I could do was pick up after the dog, empty the dishwasher and cook," he says.
Today, Tom is working hard to make it up to his family and pay it forward by educating the public about transplantation. As President of Vital Alliance, a local organization supporting donors and transplant recipients and promoting organ and tissue donation in San Antonio, Tom speaks at Health Fairs and community events, mentors heart transplant candidates and works hard to honor the donors and their families for giving the gift of life.
The Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Program of Texas Transplant Physician Group serves patients at Texas Transplant Institute on the campus of Methodist Heart Hospital in San Antonio, Texas.