By Kim Hilsenbeck.
Two phone calls, possibly within hours of each other, had polar opposite news for two Texas families.
Athena Tyner of Buda got the call at 3:01 a.m. Nov. 9. It was her son Landon’s transplant nurse, saying a heart was ready.
Hours earlier, a family somewhere in the panhandle of Texas likely received a very different message; their son, husband or brother was gone.
At top,Hays High School student Landon Tyner is rerecovering from a heart transplant surgey at Children’s Hpspital in Houston. His mom, Athena Tyner, said he is doing well but not out of the woods. She is grateful to the family of the heart donor. (Photo by Athena Tyner) |
But for the Tyners, that call meant everything.
Landon, 16, has dilated ardiomyopathy, a congenital disease that weakens and enlarges the heart muscle. The disease progressed in him to the point of requiring a transplant.
Tyner and her husband, Case, and their son Taylor, live near Houston to be close to Children’s Hospital. At a moment’s notice, they had to be ready to bring Landon in for a heart transplant.
“He was only on the (transplant) list for nine days,” Tyner said in a recent phone interview. “He went active Nov. 1 and had surgery on the ninth.”
Since the summer, doctors kept this Hays High School student alive with a device implanted in his chest called LVAD. It helped his heart keep beating and must be plugged in or use batteries at all times.
“I seriously think [Landon getting a heart so fast] was a miracle,” Tyner said. “People are on the list for years. People with [LVAD] device sometimes don’t even get out of hospital.”
She said the device was just a bridge until his transplant surgery.
“It was a temporary fix,” Tyner said.
Now, 10 days post-transplant, she said Landon appears to be on a path to recovery.
“So far, he’s good but they don’t know. He just needed little tweaks – he had fluid in lungs, high blood pressure,” Tyner said.
Doctors are treating those “tweaks” with medicine. She said Landon is eating, exercising and looking better. But he’s not out of the woods.
“It’s hard for 15-year-old to understand,” Tyner said. “He instantly feels better, even his face looks different, but he doesn’t realize it’s a long road.”
A biopsy this Thursday will tell the Tyners if Landon’s body is accepting the new heart. He will remain on three anti-rejection drugs for rest of his life.
Because of the high risk of infection, Landon won’t go to school for rest of this year.
“The drugs will cause him to have fewer white blood cells, which will suppress his immune system,” Tyner said. “He’s wearing a mask everywhere.”
She said he recently asked to go one floor up to play Bingo. Doctors told him, “No,” because he can’t be around all those other patients.
But should the biopsy show his body is accepting the new heart, Tyner said Landon could be out of the hospital Friday.
“If is body is not rejecting [the heart], we can leave,” she said.
But with twice weekly visits to the doctor for several months to a year, Tyner said she and her husband, along with Landon and his brothers, are contemplating staying in Conroe for the next year. In fact, she said they’ve considered permanently relocating to the Houston area, given its close proximity to the hospital.
“We can’t do all this traveling from Buda,” she said. “And I don’t want to go to any other hospital. I want the best.”
Tyner said her family is so grateful to the family of the heart donor in Amarillo. If she chooses to contact them, she has to wait at least a year and then she can write a letter. The family can then decide if they want to contact the Tyners.
In the meantime, she said, “I just want them to know how thankful we are.”
