“I came back from a military exercise then. I had always considered myself healthy, and suddenly he started short of breath even on the way up the stairs.” he recalls the moments when his life was turned upside down. An ambulance immediately took him to the Brno Hospital at St. Anne. First on the lungs, after a while he ended up in the hands of cardiologists. “I was found to have an enlarged and severely weakened heart,” described.
He was then treated unsuccessfully for a year. Thanks to his age of 26 and his good condition, he became one of the first patients on whom the doctors at the Center for Cardiovascular and Transplantation Surgery in Brno successfully performed a heart transplant. In May, 30 years will pass, which he received from doctors and fate in addition. Peter was operated on on Friday the 13th. “And then thirteen is an unlucky number,” she smiles gratefully.
A wonderful moment of awakening
He was lucky at the very beginning, he waited only a month for a new organ from a donor. He remembers waking up from anesthesia to this day: “I was sore all over, but it was great! I could breathe. After a few days, they had to put me in isolation because the body started to reject the organ, but with the help of medication, the immunity was calmed down and I was able to go home after three months.”
You know that…
…Petr is the longest-living heart transplant patient in Moravia and the fourth in the country overall? The Prague IKEM cares for three people who have been living with someone else’s heart for 31, 34 and 35 years.