Transubstantiation : Part Eight : End game

By this stage Professor Barnard had already selected his second patient, Dr Philip Blaiberg.

Transubstantiation : Part Seven : T-Day

Please click on the image above to see the website of the 
"Heart of Cape Town Museum"

And so on  this day, forty six years ago, in a nine hour long operation , the first human heart transplant was carried out in Cape Town. 

And...in a twist of fate that a fiction writer would not dare to make up...well...you make up your own mind...Lucien reads "The Wife's Story"

I recommend this superb film with Rupert Graves as Chris Barnard, called "The First New Heart"

Transubstantiation : Part Six : T minus 1 day

The 'Ambulance drivers' story...from the days when the ambulance service was little more than a "horizontal taxi service"...
...where the crew provided a "scoop-and-scoot" service, years before the "stay-and-play" service we currently expect.

Click  the  'play button' to hear Lucien read the "Ambulance drivers story" from "One Life" by Chris Barnard.

Transubstantiation : Part Five : T minus 2 days

Denise Ann Darvall (1943 – 3 December 1967) was the donor in the world’s first successful human heart transplant.

After her father gave his consent, Darvall's heart was donated to Louis Washkansky. Her kidneys were given to 10-year-old Jonathan van Wyk.

His wife had told him that she wanted to be cremated should anything happen to her, but he had no idea what his daughter would have wanted.

It only took him about 4 minutes to make his mind up; he remembered a birthday cake she had once made with a heart on it and the words DADDY WE LOVE YOU. 

He also remembered a bathrobe she had brought him with her first week’s wages; she was like that always giving things to other people, so he decided to say yes.

Mr Darvall never regretted donating Denny's heart. 

He said “I could never have forgiven myself if I hadn't, I would have been haunted by her voice asking me, ‘Why daddy didn't you do it - why didn't you want to help save that person’s life?’ "

Click  the  'play button' below to hear Lucien read an excerpt called "The fathers Story"  from "One Life" by Chris Barnard.

Transubstantiation : Part Four : T minus 4 days

So near and yet so far...for 3 weeks he lay in the ward waiting...just waiting...trying to breathe and to stay optimistic...hopeful...and just breathe...

Lucien reads yet another excerpt from "One Life" by Chris Barnard.

Transubstantiation : Part Three : T minus 6 days

Chris Barnard was born in Beaufort West, a town on South Africa's semi-arid Great Karoo plateau on November 8, 1922. Along with his three brothers, he grew up extremely poor as his father was a Minister to a 'Coloured' Church.

The Karoo  was a physical and emotional and spiritual place at the heart of his life.

He attended the University of Cape Town, walking 8 miles a day from the flat he shared with his brother and sister-in-law.

He recalled that on his first day at UCT he wore trousers which were 'third-hand' and a jacket given to him by his best boyhood friend.

Before Barnard left for America, he had gained recognition for research in gastrointestinal pathology where he proved that the then fatal birth defect known as congenital intestinal atresia (a gap in the small intestines) was due to the foetus  not receiving enough blood during pregnancy. Barnard proved that this condition could be cured by a surgical procedure. 

In Minnesota he worked with one of the first usable "heart-lung" bypass machines.The National Institutes of Health, donated some $3000 to him to buy the components to ship back to Cape Town and gave him a further $6000 spread over 3 years, a fact he readily acknowledges.

On his return to South Africa, he introduced open-heart surgery at Groote Schuur hospital, designed artificial valves for the human heart, and experimented with the transplantation of the hearts of dogs. He performed the first kidney transplant in Africa, almost as a way to establish a fully fledged transplant team and unit.

All of this served as preparation for his 1967 human heart transplant.

Despite having a very religious upbringing, and with even his own writing reflecting a continuing turmoil over death and euthanasia and God and "the soul", he was still to say that , "For me the heart has always been an organ without any mystique attached to it ... merely a primitive pump."

Barnard's advances in heart surgery brought him honours from a host of foreign medical societies, governments, universities, and philanthropic (charitable) institutions. 

However he never got the Nobel Prize he felt he and his team deserved,something which irritated him to the end.

Shortly before Barnard's death, he spoke with Time magazine acknowledging that he had stood on the shoulders of those who had been working in the field for years.

"The heart transplant wasn't such a big thing surgically," he said. 

"The point is I was prepared to take the risk. 

My philosophy is that the biggest risk in life is not to take the risk."

The road to Niew Bethesda.

Click on the picture above for a link to 'Karoo space"

Transubstantiation : Part Two : T minus 7 days

So there  he was...

...this anxious, proud, focused young surgeon...

...permission had been given to him by the Ethics Committee of the University of Cape Town to perform a heart transplant...

...the first heart transplant in Africa...

...probably the first in the world if he was quick enough because the Americans, -including the people who had trained him- , were snapping at his  heels...

He had a willing patient...

...he had a team of some of the best physicians, surgeons, nurses and technicians in South Africa... 

...he just had to wait for someone else to die...

Click  the  'play button' below to hear Lucien read an excerpt from "One Life" by Chris Barnard.