Hazel Roby

Valentine's Day 2002 was like no other for Hazel Roby. Last year, she received a very special heart. It wasn't chocolate nestled in a gold box. This heart arrived two days earlier — a gift of life, packaged neatly with two donor lungs.

No gift could have meant as much to this great-grandmother from Derby, Kan. Without a heart and double-lung transplant, performed Feb. 12, 2002, Hazel may never have celebrated another Feb. 14.

Hazel's local cardiologist diagnosed her condition, severe primary pulmonary hypertension, in March 2001. By the time she came to Mayo Clinic her health was deteriorating so rapidly that even aggressive experimental drug therapy couldn't prevent her heart from failing. Her tenuous condition suggested a heart, double-lung transplant, a surgery so complex it's usually reserved for patients under 55. Yet the transplant surgeons at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville were willing to look beyond Hazel's age, which otherwise might have disqualified her for this rare triple transplant, to her overall health and positive attitude, which made her a good candidate. After carefully weighing her condition, they offered a cautious expectation of success.

"We all felt that she behaved mentally and physically like somebody younger than her chronological age of 61. So the decision wasn't that difficult," says Cesar Kellar, M.D., medical director of the Heart-Lung and Lung Transplant Program at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville. "In the end, she proved us right."

As for Hazel? With national statistics suggesting only a 50 percent chance of success, she wasn't sure at first that a heart and double-lung transplant was worth the risk. But the further her disease progressed, the more she realized this was her last hope.

"I accepted the fact that this was what it would take if I wanted to live," says Hazel. "And I just felt if it were possible, they could do it."

Hazel couldn't have been in better hands. Even though the heart-lung program at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville was only two years old, team members brought extensive experience to the table. And while her procedure would be performed in Jacksonville, she was benefiting from an institutionwide philosophy that the best outcomes emerge when patient care is backed by multidisciplinary expertise and scientific pursuit.

One year after her surgery, follow-up biopsies and other tests have shown that her new organs are functioning superbly, with no hint of rejection. "The remarkable thing," says Dr. Keller, "is that heart, double-lung transplants are very seldom performed beyond age 55. But, at 62, she's been doing very, very well with it."

Hazel is no longer tethered to oxygen or afraid to take even the smallest steps. Instead, she is walking a brisk 30 minutes a day, breathing nothing but fresh air. And while she's on a lifetime drug regimen to ward off rejection, it's a small price to pay for better health — and time with her husband, Bill. "I'm just happy to be here," she says.