Nine days after becoming Utah's second artificial-heart recipient, Alvin Marsden walked slowly down the hallway at LDS Hospital to meet reporters and photographers.
They wanted to talk about his new heart - a plastic CardioWest C-70 doctors say will keep him alive until he can receive a human donor heart. Although the heart itself is in his chest, he is connected to a shoulder-high console that powers it. Monitors on the console show the heart's function.Marsden was more interested in talking about the things in his heart than the technology surrounding it.
"I want to live. That's the reason I did it," said the 56-year-old man from Boise. "I have too many things in life to accomplish yet. . . . When you have three hours to live one way or the other, you make the choice that's best for you.
"I'm looking forward to living a life like I haven't lived before. I have to restructure goals.
"My family is very important to me. I want more time with them. I want more time with God. I want more time to help other people," he said.
Family, for Marsden, includes his wife, Joanne, son Christopher and two grandchildren. His sister, Evelyn, attended the press conference because the rest of his family couldn't be there.
Marsden and his lead surgeon, Dr. James W. Long, director of artificial heart technologies for the UTAH transplant program, sported green ribbons during the interview. They wore ribbons in honor of Organ Donor Awareness Week.
Marsden awaits donation of a human heart. The CardioWest C-70 has only received Food and Drug Administration approval as a stopgap measure until a transplant becomes available.
While they hope a heart becomes available soon, Marsden and Long also hope it takes at least a couple of weeks. Before he received the artificial heart, Marsden had become very weak and "nutritionally debilitated." He had experienced both kidney and liver failure. Besides recuperating from an invasive surgery, he's now regaining the strength he lost over the course of his illness.
"I feel absolutely tremendous," Marsden beamed, adding that the artificial heart doesn't physically feel any different than his own heart did, aside from the fact that it works better. "If I had the energy . . . I think I could run a mile (with it)."
Marsden described the decision to use the artificial heart as the action of a drowning man who grabs onto a branch. "That branch saved my life. The only important thing is the results."
Marsden's coronary-artery disease appeared about the time Utah doctors were performing the first artificial-heart implant on Dr. Barney Clark in 1982. Doctors did a coronary-artery bypass graft on Marsden and he went back to his business as a land developer.
In 1991 he had a heart attack and the following year he began a slide into heart failure. In October 1992, Marsden consulted the Utah Transplantation Affiliated Hospitals Heart Failure Clinic at the University of Utah. There, Dr. Dale Renlund, director of the UTAH Heart Transplantation Program, began treating him with conventional therapy.
It helped, but by February, he was in heart failure. Doctors put him on investigational heart-failure medication that bought him time.
Two months ago, he started going seriously downhill and was admitted to the University Hospital for intravenous heart-failure medications, under the care of Dr. David Taylor, a cardiologist with the heart-transplant program. By the end of the month he was in intensive care.
Marsden's sister beamed and wiped at tears as her brother discussed his prognosis. Later, her voice cracked as she remembered sitting by him and watching him literally slipping farther and farther away.
"I'm losing it," he told her.
On April 11, Marsden's liver and kidneys shut down. A balloon pump was put in his aorta to provide support. And he learned that he had only hours - possibly days - to live without a transplant.
He was transferred to LDS Hospital by ambulance and that night a cardiac team implanted the heart during a six-hour surgery. In less than a day, he was off the respirator. By the weekend, he was watching "The Hunt for Red October" with his grandkids.