It was 5:00 p.m. Thursday, the first day of March 2012. It was St. David’s Day and, for all Welshmen, an extremely special day of the year. Saint David, or Dewi Sant as he is known in Welsh, is our Patron Saint. I sat in my office at home, propped up in a wheelchair; I had made it to yet another milestone in the two-and-a-half-year wait on the transplant list, my quest to stay alive. I was being supported in that by a wonderful intravenous drug called Milrinone. I wondered if I would make it to the next one I had set; I doubted it and had, to a large extent, resigned myself to my coming demise; no, I was almost looking forward to it. The phone rang, and the caller ID read ‘Duke 919 area code.’
“Hello….. Mr Carden?”
“Yes”.
“This is Melissa from Duke Transplant; we have a heart for you. How quickly can you get to Duke Hospital?”
I thought I would achieve one of those ‘bucket list items’, screaming through the streets at breakneck speed and being pulled over by the Police. They would ask me what I thought I was doing, and I would reply, “I’m going to have a heart transplant!” Then the officer would tell me to follow him and we would both shoot off in a cloud of smoke, sirens wailing and blue lights flashing!
60.7 miles 58 minutes, from Jamestown, NC to Duke University hospital…. for the first time ever, I never saw a single police officer all of the way!