Dr. H. Edward Garrett Jr.

In a recent story for The Commercial Appeal (Baptist's heart, lung transplant program marks 25 years of saving, improving lives; Nov. 21), I wrote about the heart and lung transplant program celebrating its 25^th year at Baptist Memorial Hospital, the people involved in making these miracles happen and those who benefit from it all.

For the piece I interviewed Teresa Dawson, cardiovascular line director for the program, and Renee Hatcher, nurse manager, at length. I also had the opportunity to speak with Brad Bradshaw, a patient who had a heart transplant in 2006. Mr. Bradshaw actually died three times and hearing his story will put all of our lives in perspective.

On a Tuesday afternoon, I was shown into an office in the Baptist Hospital doctor’s building to interview Dr. H. Edward Garrett Jr., head of the transplant program. The first thing that struck me was the size of the office. It wasn’t large and it certainly wasn’t opulent, stacked with papers on the credenza, a model of a heart and the requisite diplomas hung on the walls. I thought at the time that if I was responsible for taking a heart out of one human and putting it into another, I’d at least ask for a larger office.

We spoke about his past – born in Texas and moved at an early age to Memphis – his schooling and his father, Dr. Garrett the elder, a cardiovascular surgeon for Baptist who performed the world’s first successful coronary bypass. Dr. Garrett senior also assisted Junior on his first transplant at Baptist.

During the interview, one in which I got to hold a pump that can be inserted next to the heart to help do the work of the heart and prolong life until a suitable donor can be found (this pump looked like something I once installed in a malfunctioned dishwasher), Dr. Garrett told me a story that, unfortunately, didn't have a place in the final draft for the paper, of a transplant he worked on while he was doing his residency at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

“We had done a transplant in St. Louis and there had been a mistake at the hospital where the donor was and they had gotten the wrong blood type. We didn’t find out we had transplanted the wrong type into this patient until it was already done, so we had a very short time to try to find another heart. We found a heart in Montana, which was way away from where we could normally go to get a heart, so we got the Air Force to agree to fly it back for us. I went up and harvested the heart and handed it to this 18-year-old fighter pilot and he wouldn’t let me fly back with him, but he took off in front of us and we took off in a Lear Jet right behind him. That (Air Force) jet was so fast that he had gotten back to St. Louis, they had done the second transplant and the patient was already in the ICU before our Lear Jet landed. I think they got back in 20 minutes.”

It was a pleasure meeting Dr. Garrett and some of the people he works with daily as well as Mr. Bradshaw and hearing about his new lease on life and his outlook on life, on this second life he’s been given.

I hope I, nor any of my friends or family ever require this team’s services, but if the need does arise, it’s good to know that Memphis has such a program.

Terry Dunn (left), who got a new heart six years ago, was among 48 heart transplant recipients who attended the program's annual picnic at Baptist Memorial Hospital-Memphis. Here, Dunn thanks program director Dr. H. Edward Garrett Jr. (Photo by Ben Fant)

Socks and snot

Is it wrong to enjoy your child being sick?

Wait, no, that is wrong. Now that I see that written out, I can see where I may be misunderstood. Munchausen by proxy and all that. Call off DHS while I explain.

GK was up most of Tuesday night with fever and coughing, so I kept her at home yesterday. Sure, there were eruptions of wanting mommy, but she spent most of the day curled up next to me watching her cartoons and refusing the juice I implored her to drink every few minutes. And, sure, I spent much of the day being coughed, sneezed and farted on, but mostly she was just sweet and a bit pitiful. It's one of the only times she will just sit with me and let me rub her back and that she'll ask me questions and wait for, and listen to, the answers. She needed her daddy and that's a rare thing around here with such a good mommy in the line up.

Certainly I don't wish her, or any of my kids, to be sick, it's just that she's a different person when she isn't feeling well. She's suddenly not so 3.

Kristy took her to the doctor in the afternoon and it's a respiratory thing with a lot of sinus drainage. A little antibiotic will fix her right up and she was already feeling better and eager to get back to school today, back to her normal old self again. She was certainly well enough to throw a rousing, healthy fit about her socks, which was timely since that is precisely what my column in The Commercial Appeal is about today: socks, seams, toes, timing and GK.

Normal is good since I do have work to do. I did, however, while nursing her to health yesterday, manage to conduct three phone interviews, write one story and finish another, do dishes and the laundry, and cook dinner.

Other than the heartache of seeing my kid ill, and socks, this parenting thing might be getting ... easier?

A Vast Difference

I love my children, I really do. All of them. But, seriously, four is enough and has been for quite a while. So tomorrow I take a stab, so to speak, at being sterile.

This little procedure (less than 30 minutes!) goes against everything I've ever held dear. From the very first I can remember, every waking moment has been spent keeping sharp, pointy objects away from the area above my knees and below my navel. It's been my raison d'etre. It's become a way of life, a creed, almost like a sixth sense.

And, yet, tomorrow I am actually paying someone - someone I have never met, mind you - to snip some wiring underneath there as though I were a faulty dashboard on an 18-year-old Volvo wagon.

Ouch! That's my blinker!

And then I will recuperate. Ohhhh will I recuperate. I plan to lie in one spot for as long as I can possibly get away with. I'll read books and watch movies and play on my laptop ... well, maybe not that. At some point I know I'll have to get up and become productive (though not reproductive!) again. There's only so long a woman who has been through labor four times is going to walk into the bedroom to see me lying prone with a bag of frozen peas on my pods.

I'm still not sure how to explain my prolonged convalescence to The Quartet, other than "It's Saturday, I'll get out of bed by dinner." Because it will be Friday ... and then, eventually, Sunday. I've had The Talk with C, but I haven't had The V Talk with him. There's no need to scare the boy just yet. I suppose I'll tell the kids that I just don't feel well.

Because I won't.

In fact, I'm not feeling so good now just thinking about it. A little nauseous, in fact. I think my vas deferens are twitching. I'd better go lie down ... just to get used to it.