'It changed my life,' Vermont man forever grateful after undergoing 2 organ transplants in 3 years
BOSTON – A Vermont man who has tempted fate more than once says he's lucky to be alive. And he has a good friend to thank for that.
Clay Palmer received two life-saving organ transplants three years apart, to the day.
"Sorry if I get emotional because it changed my life," Palmer said.
Palmer was living a happy, normal life with a family, a home, and a job he loved. Then suddenly while out hunting, he was stopped in his tracks.
"It felt like my heart was jumping out of my chest and it brought me to my knees," Palmer said. "I knew I was in trouble."
Through sheer grit, he got himself to an ER where a doctor confirmed what he had already suspected. A heart attack at only 29 years old.
"I said 'Please don't let me die,'" Palmer recalled.
Doctors did save his life, but the damage caught up to him 24 years later when his heart began to misfire. A defibrillator was implanted in his chest which would periodically shock his heart back into a normal rhythm but one night, it just kept firing.
"I said, 'Honey, call an ambulance because I'm not gonna be here much longer,'" Palmer said. "I died in my living room."
Paramedics revived him, and he was eventually transferred to Tufts Medical Center where he was placed in a medically induced coma and kept alive on life support. He desperately needed a new heart.
"[One day] the doctor came in and told me, 'Mr. Palmer, we're harvesting a heart for you right now,'" Palmer recalled tearfully. "And I'll never be able to repay the donor or the donor's family, but I'll always be really grateful and very thankful."
After his transplant, the new heart was working well, but his own kidneys were not. He ended up requiring dialysis for months and was told he would also need a kidney transplant.
With the help of the Tufts kidney donor program, Palmer started looking for donors on social media. He handed out cards to strangers. Then, a woman in the same bowling league as Palmer answered the call.
"Something in my heart told me I needed to try," said Stacy Sturtevant who was, indeed, a match.
But doctors told her she would need to lose weight to be eligible.
"I'm 52 years old," Sturtevant told the transplant doctor, "And you want me at a weight I used to be in high school? That was 30 some odd years ago."
But she did it. Sturtevant dropped 83 pounds over the course of a year. And she had only one request. Sturtevant wanted to have them undergo surgery on the same day that Palmer had his heart transplant years earlier - October 19.
"We were all working to make this kidney transplant happen on the same day of his heart transplant three years later," said Dr. Ashtar Chami, a transplant nephrologist at Tufts Medical Center. "That was our project for about three weeks in the transplant division."
"[Stacy] worked awfully hard to be the donor, and she once told us she'd be disappointed if she wasn't. So we're like 'Oh, hope this works for her,'" Palmer joked. "She's my hero."
"If I could, I would do it again," Sturtevant said. "But of course, I only have one kidney. You can't give your other kidney up."
Now, after two organ transplants, Clay is back to enjoying life the way he used to.
"I'm doing stuff I haven't done for 25 years," he said. "I'm here to tell you, it's the beginning of a fruitful life down the road."
Donating a kidney has become incredibly safe, yet about 90,000 patients are on the waitlist and many will not receive one. So, doctors at Tufts have streamlined the process to make it as easy as possible for potential donors.
If you'd like more information, go to the Tufts Medical Center website.