TV Message Ends Man’s Long Wait for Heart-Lung Transplant

TUCSON —  A man who waited a year for donor lungs and a heart, then learned from television that the organs were available, underwent transplant surgery Friday and was recuperating in critical condition.

Terry May, 32, a Tempe accountant, was in surgery for more than six hours at University Medical Center.

Dr. Jack Copeland, who led the transplant team, said the next few days will be “critical in seeing how he does.”

‘Considerable Bleeding’

Hospital spokeswoman Nina Trasoff said there was “considerable bleeding” in May’s chest during the operation but that doctors were able to control it.

Trasoff said Copeland “has said that about one-third (of heart-lung recipients) survive and do well, about one-third will die and one-third will survive but show no marked improvement.”

May was diagnosed in 1984 as having primary pulmonary hypertension, a degenerative lung condition that also causes the heart to fail.

Copeland said in an interview earlier this week that May had not been expected to live this long and had been “doing very badly” on Monday.

May, who had been waiting for the transplant for about a year, was alerted that the organs were available Thursday when a Phoenix television station ran the message line “Terry May: Call University Medical Center in Tucson” during the National Football League game between the Dallas Cowboys and St. Louis Cardinals. May, who was having dinner at a cousin’s home in Phoenix, did not see the message but was notified by a friend who did.

Beeper Did Not Work

Trasoff said officials sought help from the television station after finding that May was not home and that the beeper he had carried for the past several months apparently was not working.

May’s new heart and lungs came from a 38-year-old Las Vegas woman who was pronounced brain dead Thursday after an accident at her home, said Dr. Joan Brookhyser, medical director of the Nevada Donor Organ Referral Service in Las Vegas.

The world’s longest surviving heart-lung recipient, Mary Gohlke, lives in Mesa, Ariz. She underwent the operation at Stanford University on March 9, 1980.