By Madelaine B. Landry
Meet Randy Nunez, a 58-year-old heart recipient from SWLA who underwent his transplant procedure less than a year ago, in April of 2024.
Talking with him, you can see that he struggles with a rollercoaster of emotions. Transplant patients fight to maintain a balance between the joy they feel because they’ve survived and the depression, even guilt, they feel because their survival is due to the fact that someone else didn’t survive.
Taking large doses of meds daily can also alter one’s moods, but they’re a necessity, keeping the body from rejecting its new organ and keeping one’s immunity strong.
There are a few things Nunez is adamant about:
“It’s important to have trust in the Lord — only He can make healing happen,” Nunez says. “I am not giving you permission to tell my story because I want either admiration or pity. I only want this story out there if it can make a difference, to convince others that they should never give up. There’s no glory in this for me, but I do want to celebrate all organ donors for their unselfish decisions, otherwise others like me would not be able to share their stories. If only one life is changed, then I know I did the right thing.”
Recovery from a major medical procedure is challenging. It takes a transplant patient time to begin to appreciate their new lease on life, to contemplate that they have received another chance. Nunez is extremely grateful to so many people who went on this journey with him: His wife Delena, his daughters Nikki and Brittney, his mother Becky and his brother Scott; and his medical teams in SWLA and Houston. But he’s especially grateful to the “chief surgeon upstairs,” to whom he prays daily. “I should’ve died many times throughout this ordeal,” says Nunez, pointing his finger upward. “What brought this about was family heart disease, but what brought me through it was faith.”
NUNEZ GETTING A PACEMAKER PRIOR TO HEART TRANSPLANT
In 2008, Nunez underwent an aortic dissection, a surgery that requires incisions from the back of the heart to the kidneys. “At that time, it was the largest cardiovascular surgery they could do for me. I was laying down reading a book one day and suddenly, it felt like someone hit me with an ax.”
The inner layer of the aorta, the main artery that carries blood from the heart to the body, had torn and separated from the other layers. This allowed blood to flow between the layers, weakening the aorta and potentially causing it to rupture. An emergency aortic dissection saved Nunez’s life.
But his journey had only just begun.
“Then along came COVID,” Nunez says. “I had lots of discussions with my local cardiologists, Drs. Michael Turner and Anna Landry, but things kept happening to me, one thing after another. I felt badly; I couldn’t breathe. They removed my gall bladder, for some reason, and then I ended up in a hospital in Houston. I was diagnosed with endocarditis, infection of the heart. The heart muscle gets tougher and enlarges, and it must pump harder, which causes fluid buildup. Blood backed up into my lungs; my feet and legs were swelling. Every two to four months, I’d spend about a week in the hospital to remove fluid. It was clear that my heart failure was advancing.
“what brought me through it was faith”
“Prior to this, when I’d started developing an arrythmia, they’d put in a pacemaker. But clearly that wasn’t enough. At Memorial Hermann Medical Center in Houston, I was told I had to have a heart transplant or I would die. Initially, I said no; I was not going through that. My feeling was that someone deserved it more than me, that there was a better person out there. Dr. Harish Devineni, my heart failure transplant specialist, just looked and me and said he’d come back tomorrow to talk more about it.”
Meanwhile, Nunez recalls, there were tears, prayers, and discussions with his wife. A Nigerian priest entered his room. Although he could barely understand him at first, they spent the rest of the day together.
“We were knees-to-knees, reviewing my life from as far back as I could remember to present day. I was raised Catholic, I knew about God, but I’d not really grasped the concept of God. This priest made me understand self-worth. He explained that all I had to was ask for divine help. I don’t think it was his intent to change my mind; it was more to open it.”
More tears, prayers, and discussions with his wife and family followed. His wife told him he had to do what he must for his family.
Through it all, Nunez’s employer, Southern Tire Mart, went above and beyond.
“I never missed a work check,” Nunez says. “I work on 100-percent commission. My job was never in question as I worked from the hospital room whenever possible. I started this job in 1996, so apparently, they thought I was worth saving.”
NUNEZ ON ONE OF HIS POST-TRANSPLANT DAILY WALKS
Devineni returned early the next morning. By this point, he and Nunez had been together for a few years. “This man is not only my doctor, but he is also a tremendous person. I told him I’d changed my mind, and within the hour, testing began. Five days of bloodwork, CT scans, MRIs, X-rays — my entire body was poked at. At one point, they removed 34 vials of blood from me. All the tests came back confirming that I was a good transplant candidate.
“They released me after a week or so, and by then my family, my friends and my coworkers knew what was going on and what we were hoping for. (The medical team) requested a list of family and friends and called them to ask for a commitment to my caretaking and to get me to appointments. And through it all, my work colleagues also committed to covering for me when I could not work. I cannot say enough about the help I had!”
Around late spring in 2023, the acceptance letter arrived. Nunez was confirmed as a viable candidate for a new heart. He was still fighting the constant fluid buildup, unable to sleep unless he was sitting upright. He couldn’t breathe, but he continued to work when he could. In December, he received a 3 am phone call; a heart had been found.
“I had already packed a bag, anticipating this call, so we drove over to Houston, arriving around 7,” Nunez says. “They admitted me, started the testing, and scheduled my surgery for the following morning. At 10 pm, we got the bad news. This heart was not going to work.” Nunez explains that two doctors must examine the donor heart and must agree it is a good fit.
“I really started questioning the path I was on,” he recalls. “I knew how sick I was. I knew what was going to happen if I didn’t have a transplant soon, but I asked to be released so I could be home with my family for Christmas. It was awful, though. I got extremely sick, so it was back to the hospital. I was literally ‘dying’ to get this transplant.”
In early 2024, it was evident that Nunez’s condition was deteriorating. Despite the aid of machines, IVs and medicines, he was near death. By April, he was told that nothing was working. They recommended he get a left ventricular assisted device (L-VAD), which is commonly used as temporary treatments for people waiting for heart transplants. If the L-VAD doesn’t help, doctors sometimes consider an artificial heart, a device that replaces the ventricles of your heart, as an alternative short-term treatment while you wait for a heart transplant. Nunez was told he had only a 60-percent chance of making it with the L-VAD.
“I did not want that,” he says. “It took many hours to convince me to agree. Basically, they put in a pump and you must wear a vest with two battery packs that have to be recharged. It was very emotional, but finally, I told my family that it was up to them. I didn’t want to go on living like this. If they wanted me to do it, I assured them, I was not afraid of fighting. What I feared was the not knowing and putting my family through that.”
After Nunez agreed to the L-VAD, he was in his room with a nurse, the chaplain and his daughter. His wife was on the phone so that they could all pray together. He looked up to see his entire cardiology team entering his room.
“When you see two of the doctors together, you’re pretty lucky, so what was I to think? The whole team of eight walked in my room to tell me that they’d found a heart for me,” Nunez says. “Even better news — it was already at that hospital. I remember looking down the bed at my nurse. She pointed up, with tears running down her cheeks. I was just her patient; she didn’t really know me, but I will never, ever, ever forget that look on her face.
“Now Dr. Kar, he’s pretty sharp. We understand each other’s egos; we share the same type of sarcasm. Not that this mattered, but I had been prayed over by Muslims, Hindus, you name it. My whole heart transplant team was Middle Eastern, but I knew we were all praying to the same God. Before he left, he told me they were going to put this new heart into me the next morning. The experience was the total opposite of what it had been in December. Now I went from low-to-high emotionally. Dr. Devineni came to my bed, hugging me with tears in his eyes. He said, ‘I’m going to tell you something. I’ve been doing this for 25 years, and it just doesn’t happen like this. The only way we can understand this is to say it is nothing short of divine intervention.’
“I had to call my wife. I picked up the phone, only to realize I’d never hung it up. Delena had heard it all, so of course, she’s just bawling. I called my mother next. I will say this: There is no prayer stronger than a mother’s prayer for her child. My mother prayed for me constantly, never giving up. Then I called my other daughter, as well as some close friends. I had my laptop, so I started working after that, taking calls, until one of the nurses said I should stop. But I couldn’t. I had to keep my mind focused. I’d given my word to the man who hired me 20-odd years ago and I was determined to keep it.
“Finally, the moment arrived. My family was saying their goodbyes, and at that point, for the first time in my life, I had no doubts in my mind about where I was going. Although I am not a Bible scholar, I often think about Luke 5:17-26. It’s the story about a paralyzed man who needed to see Jesus. The crowd was too big, so his friends dropped him through the roof. I make the comparison that all the people who prayed for me put me through that roof. It wasn’t by my faith alone.
“My cardiologist had introduced me to Ms. Flossie McGee, who’d recently had a heart transplant. She answered my questions and told me what to expect. At the time, she was where I am now, about 10 months out from her own transplant surgery. She became my guardian angel; we still visit weekly. She is close to 70 now and is doing terrific. She told me: ‘You and I believe that you gotta go through with it — you don’t wanna go through it, though, and I understand why. You cannot get thru this without faith.”
NUNEZ leaving the hospital after getting his heart transplant
Today, Nunez laughs as he says he is down to taking only 21 pills. There are also nutrients he must take to keep his immune system strong. After a year, he will get re-evaluated for the meds.
“What they said is that this procedure changes your chemical makeup, Look at me! I used to be bald! I had the proverbial toilet-bowl lid but now look at the head of hair I have. The transplant itself really wasn’t that bad. Of course, the first few days are tough, but after about a week, my pains were more muscle-related from laying too long in the bed for 4 1/2 months. I realized that they could take your body, cut you in half and put you back together again. The good Lord carried me through it. My wife was there, holding my hands the whole time. I couldn’t walk, couldn’t feed myself; she had to do it all.
“I struggled really hard about how to pray for the donor who had to die. I’m not sure I have processed it all. I don’t know if I ever will. He was a 30-year-old man; that’s all I know. He had a mother too, and a family. Did he die because I needed a heart? That’s what stays in my mind sometimes. It’s a prayer I pray every night, but it is not enough. I’m not a taker, I was always a giver. But this works in His time, His way, and it is not for us to question. Still, we do because we are human, so we must listen.”
Nunez says that the team explained that the new heart a transplant patient receives can only be about 20-percent different from theirs. When he was released, he still had one tube coming from his sternum. His team explained that his heart had enlarged to twice its normal size. The tube was pulling off the fluid that had filled the void. But they were sending him home anyway.
“They didn’t make me stay in Houston,” Nunez says. “The doctor came into my room and told me I could go home. I asked him what he meant. He looked at me and asked, ‘Well, how many homes have you got? You’ll feel much better there than here.’”
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