‘Tremendous Gift’ : Heart Recipient Sees Need for More Donors

Ask Gary Cooperman how old he is, and he will tell you he is 47. But his heart is only 17.

One of hundreds of people who are given a new lease on life each year through heart transplants, he has had the heart slightly more than a year.

Cooperman, of Chatsworth, believes that a lot of other people could be helped through such transplants if more organs were donated. But public awareness is not high. He said he was disappointed that National Organ and Tissue Donor Awareness Week, which ended Saturday, passed without much notice. About all that happened was that Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley presented Cooperman, who is a referee in Juvenile Traffic Court, with a donor week proclamation.

“People seem to be truly interested when they know the need,” said Cooperman, who has been working in the San Fernando Court Juvenile Traffic Court for the past month. “So many lives can be helped, there should be a major effort to educate the public.”

A year ago, Cooperman was diagnosed as having myocardiopathy, a disease causing inflammation of the heart muscle. Doctors gave him two months to live.

Seven weeks later, on New Year’s Day, he was told by telephone that a donated heart was available and was being flown to Los Angeles for him. About 10 hours later, Cooperman was equipped with the heart of a 16-year-old who had died in a car accident.

Cooperman does not know the name of the donor and said he does not wish to, but he did write an anonymous letter of gratitude, sent through the hospital, to the youth’s parents.

“It was a tremendous gift they and their son had given,” he said.

The youth’s corneas were donated to an organ center in Colorado and his kidneys to a center in San Francisco.

There is a shortage of organ donors in Southern California, according to a spokesman at the the Regional Organ Procurement Center at UCLA. About 24 people currently are waiting for hearts in Southern California, he said.

Thousands Could Benefit

The Journal of the American Medical Assn. said that in addition to the 400 transplants performed each year, 12,000 additional adults could benefit from transplants if more hearts were available.

Cooperman said the Los Angeles County coroner’s approval last Friday of a request to disconnect a 15-month-old girl from life support systems and the transplant on Sunday of her heart into another child at Loma Linda University Medical Center will help to raise awareness about the need for donors.

“It causes people to think, and every time they think, they will come to the ultimate conclusion there is a need for more donors,” he said.

Cooperman is forming a group with some other area transplant recipients to try to get members of the community to help defray the cost of transporting organs by donating money, fuel and helicopters, and finding volunteer pilots.

“Think how much more good could be done if there were more hearts,” Cooperman said.

Reminded of Donor

Sometimes the youths who appear for traffic violations in Cooperman’s hearing room remind him of the 16-year-old heart donor.

“I think of it when I have (someone with) an excess violation, such as 90 m.p.h. on the freeway on a motorcycle,” Cooperman said. “You think about what a waste it would be if that person were killed, maimed or injured himself or someone else. I wonder if they understand what it means.”

He also thinks about it when a juvenile comes in with an organ donor card on their license. “I feel a little closer to that person. It shows they are thinking about the welfare of someone else. It’s the greatest gift they can give,” he said.

Cooperman said that to most people transplants mean “you immediately go on television and have rejection problems and strokes,” such as are experienced with artificial hearts. In contrast, transplanting donated organs has become almost routine.

He said that he didn’t have any doubts about whether to have the surgery, but was concerned about the pain and discomfort and all the tubes that he would be connected to afterwards.

Exercised the Next Day

But by the next day, he was riding an exercise bicycle, clutching a pillow to his chest to minimize the pain.

And then there was breathing. Before the surgery, every breath was difficult and he could sleep only if he was sitting up.

He said the first breath he took after awakening from surgery was like a miracle.

“I forgot how good that felt,” Cooperman said, remembering the feeling.

Cooperman said his strong faith helped him through the surgery.

“I believe God wants us to preserve life, “ he said. “Doctors have a God-inspired gift to do that.”

Before the transplant, after he was told he had only a short time to live, he said all he could think about was leaving his wife and two children.

“Life is so much more meaningful” now, he said.

“It’s a second chance at life with the benefit of knowing what the alternative could have been,” he said.