Lawyer’s heart-pump invention saved his own life during surgeryBy Eva Wolchover | Sunday, February 10, 2008
http://www.bostonherald.com As a young man, Edson Rafferty invented 50 medical devices, including an artificial heart pump widely used in surgeries today.
In the past 30 years, his bio-pump - “the heart” of a “heart-lung machine” - helped save more than 20 million lives, he said.
Little did he know that his own life would be included among those.
In October 2005, during a fairly routine stomach-banding operation at a Boston hospital, a pair of clamps used to separate an incision slipped into Rafferty’s thoracic cavity and punctured his aorta.
“My heart stopped for half an hour,” Rafferty said. “I don’t know how I survived, I had no blood flow to my brain.”
Two months later, when he woke from a coma, Rafferty learned that his life had been saved by the very heart pump he invented. His surgeon told him that due to the overbooking of operating rooms, Rafferty’s procedure was moved to a room used for open-heart surgery. A heart surgeon setting up for surgery rushed in using the bio-pump to help restart Rafferty’s heart.
Rafferty woke from his coma without a functioning kidney.
“It was a real miracle that I survived,” said Rafferty, a father of four. “As hard as dialysis is, I thank my lucky stars every day. For my sake, for my kids’ sake, for my grandchildren’s sake. It’s just so wonderful for me to be alive.”
Before he can pick up the pieces of his life - return to his successful civil litigation practice and once again be an active and energetic companion to his children - he says he must find a new kidney.
“I desperately need a new kidney through no fault of my own,” he writes on his matchingdonors.com profile. I have always been a very healthy person - until my kidneys were destroyed as a result of a catastrophic surgical accident.”
Article URL:
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1072497
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