Andrea Clegg is hardly the image you’d imagine when we think of someone with heart failure. She’s young, vibrant, athletic and full of life.
But in her early 20s, Andrea’s heart began to fail. She had a defibrillator surgically implanted because the left side of her heart just didn’t work.
On her wedding day – the most important day of her life to date – Andrea’s heart literally broke. She wasn’t left at the altar, not at all. She married the love of her life, Sean Clegg and not long after they said their vows and were celebrating at their wedding reception, Andrea got the shock of a lifetime.
Andrea was at the podium, new husband at her side delivering her wedding speech when suddenly, mid-speech, she gasps and is shocked by her defibrillator three times and collapsed in a heap. 16×9 had access to this exclusive video.
“Out of nowhere something rammed me in the chest. I had no idea what it was. No idea.”
Andrea and Sean spent their wedding night in hospital. It was the beginning of a journey they’d walk together. Andrea was not well. She was in what doctor’s call “Walking Shock”.
(Andrea was) “very, very sick. Some of the times we don’t’ know if they’re going to survive from morning till afternoon and she was maybe not that ill, but very, very close to that,” says Dr. R.J. Cusimano, a cardiac surgeon at Toronto General Hospital.
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It was clear to doctors that Andrea needed a new heart but there wasn’t one available. Doctors decided to implant a mechanical heart inside Andrea’s body as a bridging tool to keep Andrea alive until a donor heart became available. The mechanical heart is also known as a Left Ventricular Assist Device, or L.V.A.D.
“It’s sort of a piggy back on to the heart and it actually does the work for the heart,” said Cusimano. “Any blood that returns to the heart instead of being ejected by the heart, pumped by the heart, is pumped by the machine,” he said.
The LVAD changed Andrea’s life dramatically. She felt good, more energetic and could go back to doing many of the activities she was doing before: doing dishes, playing her Wii, walking the dogs. The problem though, was that she had to live with a cord sticking out of her torso, and she could never be without her battery pack that she carried around with her in a backpack at all times. At night, she was plugged into an outlet in the wall.
Nearly 100 people a year get LVADs in Canada and they cost about $80,000 each. Toronto General has one of the biggest LVAD programs in North America.
As Andrea waited for her new heart, there were false alarms that a donor heart had come available. Finally though, the call came to Andrea in the middle of the night, just before Christmas, awakening Andrea and her husband, Sean. 16×9 got the call too and rushed to the hospital with cameras rolling, getting exclusive access to the operating room.
For five hours, 16×9 filmed over the shoulders of the transplant surgeons at Toronto General Hospital. The team was lead by Dr. Vivek Rao, Surgical Directors of the Heart Transplant Program at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre. Our cameras captured the moment when the heart Andrea was born with, LVAD attached, deflated and stopped forever. Moments later, a surgeon came crashing through the operating room doors announcing, “Hearts’ here!” and for the next while, Dr. Rao focused as he stitched the new, healthy-looking donor heart into Andrea’s body.
16×9 follows Andrea’s journey from transplant through recovery, as well as Andrea’s newfound passion for transplant activism.
There are 500,000 Canadians living with heart failure and 50,000 new patients are diagnosed each year.
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