After her heart started to fail, a first-of-its-kind surgery saved her life

Sue Baker was used to spending time within the hospital. She had began having coronary heart troubles in 2015, and because the subject escalated, she spent increasingly more time within the hospital. She had a pacemaker implanted to maintain her coronary heart beating. As soon as, she spent 5 days in a coma. 

In 2019, as her coronary heart operate continued to fail, Baker acquired a left ventricular help system, or LVAD, a mechanical pump that helps the guts’s left ventricle flow into blood all through the physique.

For years, Baker lived on “batteries and electrical energy,” however she did not cease residing her life. She married a person she beloved, and so they began constructing a life collectively in southeast Georgia. Nevertheless, she knew the LVAD was solely a stopgap measure, and wished to verify she was residing a full life earlier than her well being declined additional. 

4 years after getting the LVAD, Baker began having harmful coronary heart rhythms. She was admitted to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, and was added to the transplant listing to await a brand new coronary heart.

For months, the 58-year-old waited, typically receiving painful shocks from her LVAD and pacemaker as they tried to maintain her coronary heart functioning. Her physique was additionally producing too many antibodies, which put her at excessive danger for rejecting any organs she acquired. Her transplant heart specialist, Dr. Pareg Patel, examined a number of drugs, together with chemotherapies, to scale back the antibodies. The method was “very scary,” she mentioned. 

Sooner or later, Patel got here to her with another choice: She might have a liver transplant, along with the brand new coronary heart. It’d clear up the antibody drawback. There was only one catch: A heart-liver transplant had by no means been accomplished in somebody with an LVAD earlier than. Her different possibility was palliative care.  

“We received to speaking about it, and I used to be like ‘You are not going to know until anyone agrees to do that. There’s not a lot selection, actually,'” Baker recalled. “It was going to be an experiment come what may.” 

A primary-of-its-kind transplant 

The liver is “like sponges that take down these antibodies,” Patel defined. Generally, livers are transplanted alongside hearts to decrease the danger of rejection. However the process means a affected person wants to attend till a coronary heart and liver can be found from the identical donor. Some folks die on the ready listing, Patel mentioned. However for Baker, it was the best choice. 

“It is a story the place we had been capable of finding an out-of-the-box resolution for anyone who I can assure you two years in the past we might have mentioned no to and put them in hospice,” Patel mentioned. “She had lower than in all probability six months to reside in, extra probably three months.” 

Baker spent months within the hospital, persevering with to obtain painful shocks from her LVAD and pacemaker. She had different issues, together with diagnoses of COVID-19 and pneumonia. In September 2024, she lastly acquired phrase {that a} coronary heart and liver had been out there to her. 

“I used to be shocked,” Baker mentioned. “I used to be so excited.” 

Patel mentioned he and his workforce anticipated that the surgical procedure could be “difficult” and “very excessive danger” due to Baker’s well being issues however everybody believed it was the very best possibility. Baker would even be donating her “completely wholesome” liver to a different affected person, Patel mentioned, in what’s often known as a domino operation. 

“I believe the cool a part of that is for Sue, is that by utilizing this expertise, primary, we had been capable of show that by inserting a liver and a coronary heart from anyone is we’re capable of make antibodies go near zero,” Patel defined. “And quantity two, we had been capable of have Sue turn into not solely a recipient of two organs, but additionally a donor in the identical day.” 

Blazing a path for different sufferers  

After her surgical procedure, Baker mentioned she had a protracted restoration, however spent her time within the hospital bonding with different sufferers. She tried to be a voice of optimism for different folks ready for transplants, she mentioned. She additionally acquired a letter from the one that acquired her liver. 

After Baker recovered and left the hospital in October 2024, she was desirous to resume her life in Georgia, however tragedy struck: Her husband died from a sudden cardiac arrest simply weeks later. Burdened by medical payments and funeral bills, her monetary scenario spiraled. She mentioned her housing is now unstable, and most spare cash goes to flying to common check-ups on the Mayo Clinic. A GoFundMe has solely raised a number of hundred {dollars}. Patel mentioned Baker will want frequent check-ups and medicine to take care of her new organs. 

Mayo Clinic mentioned it presents monetary help and cost plan choices, in addition to monetary counseling to sufferers who’re uninsured or underinsured. 

Baker mentioned she is leaning on her church for emotional help and different help. She has a caretaker, Charlene, who helps with day-to-day life. She additionally hopes that her participating within the first-of-its-kind surgical procedure will permit extra folks to obtain lifesaving remedy, and mentioned the thought brings her some solace. 

Patel mentioned that one other surgical procedure like Baker’s was already performed, and that one other is within the works. 

“If it weren’t for her, these different two sufferers would haven’t any alternative,” Patel mentioned. 

“Doing what I did, it opened it up for therefore many extra sufferers,” Baker mentioned. “It made me very completely happy to know that extra LVAD sufferers will have the ability to undergo this and really have a protracted probability at life.”