One of the world’s longest surviving heart transplant survivors has told his remarkable story for the first time to show there is life beyond the operating table and raise awareness of the need for more donors.
London-based businessman Sudhir Choudhrie had the life-saving operation 18 years ago – the average lifespan after a heart transplant is 10 years. Surgeons put his chances of survival at no more than 50 per cent because just months earlier his heart had stopped several times during a separate operation to replace a leaky heart valve.
Mr Choudhrie’s brother, Rajiv, had tragically died just one year earlier while waiting for a new heart and the team at Columbia, who had seen him before his operation at another hospital, were determined not to lose a second family member.
Mr Choudhrie’s book, ‘From My Heart: A Tale of Life, Love and Destiny’, combines his first-hand account of being a patient with recollections from the medical team, led by the world-leading heart surgeon and chat show host Dr Mehmet Oz, and from his family. His son Bhanu remembers him dictating his last testament immediately before the operation.
Dr Oz recalls: ‘Your heart was like a marathon runner at the 26th mile. You probably had a couple of hundred beats left. We thought you would die that evening, maybe the next day but not too far in the distant future. Throughout human history anyone as sick as you would have been dead within 24 hours. I can’t emphasise enough how much sicker you were than a patient usually going for a transplant. Your body was not in any way ready to survive’.
Mr Choudhrie’s new heart had to be flown from the Mid West to Columbia Hospital in New York. Dr Oz then had just 12 minutes to remove his failing heart, which was riddled with scar tissue from his earlier operation, and replace it with the heart of a 20-year-old who had died in a motor vehicle accident.
Dr Oz believes the love of his family helped him survive, saying: ‘If your heart has a reason to keep beating it will’. Mr Choudhrie echoes that sentiment, crediting the strength and love of his wife Anita and sons Bhanu and Dhairya.
Mr Choudhrie, 67, who was born in India, has written the book because, having survived for so long against all the odds, and enjoyed a better quality of life since the transplant he wants to dispel some of the myths around the operation. He says he has seen too many patients in despair whereas a positive outlook is essential. He also discusses how his use of alternative therapies, including hypnotism, helped him fight post-operation infections and deal with terrifying visions that haunted him for months afterwards.
He says in the book: ‘Despite the fact that this is now a very well established procedure, it is still surrounded by a great deal of fear and ignorance, which will only disappear when people like me talk about it and explain exactly what it was like.
‘It is entirely possible to make a full recovery and to live a full life. Indeed, in many ways my quality of life is better now than it was in my late forties when I was feeling lethargic and constantly prone to infections. Heart transplants are a brutal assault on the body, but the most important thing is a positive attitude’.
