Former Transplant Patients Receive Gift of Life – Each Other

It sounds strange – neither Kyle nor Laura Bennett was born when Dr. Denton A. Cooley made their Dec. 22, 2001, marriage possible.

But if you really think about the marriage of these two heart transplant recipients, it’s true.

Consider this – in 1968, Dr. Cooley performed the first successful heart transplant in the United States in 47-year-old Everett Thomas. The donor was a 15-year-old girl who had committed suicide. Although her brain had ceased to function, her heart was still beating. Mr. Thomas would live for another 204 days.

So 33 years before the couple tied the knot, Dr. Cooley paved the way on the scientific front.

As difficult as it may be to believe now, many Americans were upset by the 1968 transplant Mr. Thomas received. They did not accept the end of brain activity as the moment of death and condemned the practice of removing a beating heart for transplant. Many called for the end of transplantation programs.

Dr. Cooley spearheaded a successful drive in the American medical community to educate the public on heart transplantation.

"The heart," he told Life magazine, "has been considered the seat of the soul, the source of courage. But I look upon the heart only as a pump, the servant of the brain. Once the brain is gone, the heart becomes unemployed."

So on the public opinion front, Dr. Cooley also helped make the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Bennett possible.

"Believe me, we understand that we wouldn’t be alive today if it weren’t for the heart transplant program begun at the Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke’s," says Kyle. "We couldn’t be more grateful to both Dr. Cooley and Dr. Frazier."

Dr. O.H. Frazier, chief of cardiopulmonary transplantation at the Texas Heart Institute and chief of transplant services at St. Luke’s, performed the transplants on the couple. After a decade-long moratorium on heart transplants until better anti-rejection drugs were developed, Dr. Frazier, who has now performed 900 transplants – more heart transplants than any other physician in the world – began the program again at St. Luke’s in the ’80s.

The 26-year-old Kyle, who had a congenital heart condition that took a major turn for the worse in his senior year of high school, received his transplant seven years ago. His wife, who contracted a flu-like virus that attacked her heart, had a transplant three years ago.

"I was at a meeting three years ago of the Heart Exchange, a support group for heart transplant candidates and patients, when I saw her come in," says Kyle, who works for a business consulting firm. "It was just before her transplant and she was very frail, of course, but even in her frail state she was eye catching."

They began to talk, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Today, Laura, a customer service representative for a major corporation, is president of the Heart Exchange, giving support to those who were in the same situation in which she once found herself.

"I think it’s great that Kyle and I can show people that life goes on after a transplant, and that you don’t have to be an invalid," she says. "I have people say to me all the time that they can’t believe I had a heart transplant ... it’s just incredible to me that I had mine done at the same place where Dr. Cooley did the first one. It really gives you a sense of history."

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©2006 Texas Medical Center

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