Guys,
Short article about my situation from the local newspaper. Kind of cool.
nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_action=doc&p_docid=12CC8E17F44A2F48&p_docnum=1&s_dlid=DL0109122323355410986&s_ecproduct=SUB-FREE&s_ecprodtype=INSTANT&s_trackval=&s_siteloc=&s_referrer=&s_subterm=Subscription%20until%3A%2012%2F31%2F2015%2011%3A59%20PM&s_docsbal=%20&s_subexpires=12%2F31%2F2015%2011%3A59%20PM&s_docstart=&s_docsleft=&s_docsread=&s_username=cgpfree&s_accountid=AC0106122119130516735&s_upgradeable=noShelby-Utica News (MI)
The best Christmas gift
Local family shares in joy of loved one's recent heart transplant, return home
KRISTYNE E. DEMSKE C & G Staff Writer
Published: December 23, 2009
Rob Beaubien never expected to be home in time for Christmas. After spending about 90 days as a "tenant" at the hospital waiting for a heart transplant - and, beyond that, four years with a deteriorating heart condition - it looked like he'd be staying put well into the new year.
Beaubien's mother, Marsha Beaubien of Shelby Township, said her son was born with a heart defect, but they didn't know until he was 30 that it would eventually mean he'd need a transplant.
"At the time the defect was corrected (when he was a child), they didn't know what the lifespan of these children would be," she said.
A case of pneumonia four years ago landed Beaubien, 34, of Washington Township in the hospital after he blacked out at an urgent care facility.
When he woke up, he thought he was at Beaumont Hospital but had actually been airlifted to the University of Michigan. And though he had been told before that he might require a transplant someday, "that's when the doctors said that these kids that had this particular defect and this particular surgery needed to get" heart transplants, Marsha Beaubien said.
Heart of the matter Beaubien's pulmonary artery and aorta were reversed when he was born, and in 1976, the way to fix that was to put in a stent, or a detour, for the blood to flow through the heart. Marsha Beaubien said just two to four years later, the defect was fixed with a different surgery that had better outcomes for children.
Despite being told as he was growing up in Sterling Heights and Shelby Township that he should take it easy and stay away from sports that would strain his heart, Beaubien said he could never do that. He graduated from Utica High School in 1993.
"I'm just naturally athletic," he said, of playing baseball and hockey, and wrestling before finally coming upon weightlifting as a way to push himself without having to compete against others. "When I would play baseball, when I would do those things, if I ran the bases real fast, I'd have to sit down a little bit. Lifting weights allowed me to do whatever I wanted to do at my own pace. I took real offense to them telling me what I couldn't do." And that affinity for working out may have helped delay his need for a transplant, he said.
"I found out all the weightlifting and power-lifting, it really helped me add about eight years (until he needed) the transplant," he said.
He called the collapse at the urgent care a "blessing in disguise" because it caused doctors to take a closer look at his condition.
"Over the next four years, I started seeing these doctors and my heart started to deteriorate. My left ventricle started to collapse," he said.
"They would say … your heart looks so bad, but you look good." And it wasn't long, he said, before he was told he would need a transplant sooner than later - news that he didn't want to hear.
"My first reaction was, I'm screwed. I didn't want a heart transplant.
Someone tells you they're going to take your heart out of your body … I'm very in tune with my body, I wanted … my own heart," he said.
But Beaubien said he began to get sicker and sicker, feeling his heart pounding almost out of his chest as his right ventricle tried to do the work of both sides, and feeling dizzy, nauseous and filled with bouts of horrific anxiety.
"It took me about six weeks to think (and) I decided, 'OK, we're going to do this,'" he said.
'I was slowly dying'He began workout routines designed to get his body in the best physical shape possible, but eventually got to the point where he continued to get sicker and even had to quit his mortgage-industry job because the long, stressful work days were taking a toll. He took another job closer to home for about three months at the end of 2008, but even that became too much for his body, which was retaining fluid and making it harder and harder for his heart to work.
"I stopped breathing. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't do anything. I ended up going to Beaumont. I was there for four days, and they just changed my meds up," he said. He was sent home at the end of April 2009. "That Sunday night I got so sick I went into heart failure. I was slowly dying." He knew he just had to make it through the night and get himself back to the University of Michigan in the morning - it was then that his doctor told Beaubien he was one of the patients that kept him up at night. The physician also said it had "come to the point now where … just a good attitude and just being in good physical shape can't get you any further." Beaubien said he felt relief at that moment in the feeling that his saga might be winding to an end.
But there was still a long road ahead that included having a defibrillator implanted in his heart, being put on more medicine to help his heart pump more blood and staying on that medicine for eight months while he was on the transplant list waiting for a complicated match that would include a pulmonary artery with a heart - something that doesn't come along very often because doctors want to save more lives by using the lungs and the heart from a donor. To get a pulmonary artery with a heart transplant, the lungs must not be viable for donation.
Finally, nearing the end of his rope, Beaubien said he received a call from the transplant coordinator in September, who said he should check in to the hospital.
"I got Room No. 22, which is my lucky number," he said. "I ended up being there three months. I went in there very strong. I would just stay up and watch the helicopters go and think, 'OK, maybe that's mine.' "In my opinion, you can't hope for it today or tomorrow. My best day is going to be someone else's worst day. You don't want to think about something like that." Music to his ears He said he figured he'd be spending the holidays in the hospital when doctors and nurses walked into his room the evening of Nov. 22. "They said, 'We think we have a heart for you,'" he said.
"When I picked up the phone, I couldn't understand him," said Mar- sha Beaubien. "He said they have a heart. We immediately packed our things up." The surgery lasted from 5:17 a.m. till 12:15 p.m. Nov. 23, much less time than the 12 hours estimated for the procedure.
"We felt like this was a miracle.
It's like a Hallmark movie," she said.
"What better gift at any time. To be able to have him here at Christmas is just amazing." "I woke up from the surgery, and that night, at three in the morning, I took three laps around the hospital," Beaubien said. "When I woke up, I felt different. I felt blood in places that I could only get if I really worked out really hard. I was amazingly thankful." He was released early from the hospital, on Dec. 2, and right after that did something he had been putting off.
He proposed to his girlfriend, Katrina Cyr, on Dec. 6 at Westview Orchards in Washington Township.
"I didn't want to do anything like that, to be honest, until I knew I was going to be alive to do it," he said. He had shopped for the ring while he was in the hospital and picked it up the day he was released.
Recovery to make sure his heart isn't rejected can take up to a year, and he said they plan to be married as soon as he's in the clear.
His sister, Lauren Beaubien, credits Cyr with giving him the strength to go through the transplant process.
"That kind of made him change his mind," she said of Beaubien's relationship with Cyr. "We got everything that we wanted. I don't think any of us expected him to be home for Christmas. She's essentially the person that made him want to get this. She's essentially given him the reason to want to live, basically." "I made a decision a long time ago that I was not going to be beat by anything," Beaubien said. "There was an extra something that just allowed me to stay strong." And he said he wants to pass that along to other heart patients waiting for their lifesaving transplant.
"I want to see what I can do as far as helping other people," he said.
He's been asked by doctors at the University of Michigan to give lectures and talk to other patients in similar situations. "I'm hoping I can explain best I can, in my own words, how I was able to sit there for 90 days and never worry about anything.
A lot of the problems people have after the transplant is because of the stress before that.
"When you get something like this, you want to give back somehow, some way." Marsha Beaubien said she hopes others realize the importance of becoming an organ donor, so other patients have a second chance at life.
"Without people donating their loved ones'organs, people don't stand a chance," she said. "And it's just significantly easier if they (register to be a donor) ahead of time." To become an organ donor, visit
www.giftoflifemichigan.org.
You can reach Staff Writer Kristyne E. Demske at kdemske@candgnews.com or at (586) 498-1041.
Caption:Above:Rob Beaubien got this new tattoo after being released from the hospital following his heart transplant surgery. Right:Beaubien and his fiancée, Katrina Cyr.
Photos provided by Lauren Beaubien
Copyright, 2009, Shelby-Utica News (MI), All Rights Reserved.
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