NEWARK — “You will hold my heart in your hands, girl!” Lisa Salberg said to one of her nurses at Newark Beth Israel hours before she was discharged on Valentine’s Day.
Salberg meant what she said — quite literally.
Before the 48-year-old Rockaway Township resident received her heart transplant on Feb. 2, she had a rare request for her doctors: Could she keep her old heart after surgery?
Lisa Salberg holding her frozen heart at Newark Beth Israel. (Courtesy of Lisa Salberg)
“I sat there and I was speechless,” said Dr. Margarita Camacho, surgical director of the cardiac transplant and mechanical heart program at the hospital. She said she’s transplanted more than 500 hearts in her 23-year career and, “I have never had anybody ask me if they could have their heart at the end of their operation.”
Salberg told her she wanted to use her heart — long-affected by a disease known as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, or HCM, in which heart muscles are abnormally thick — as a way to educate others.
“I can actually show people what this disease looks like,” Salberg said. “Why we look so normal from the outside but our hearts are really built wrong on the inside.”
Salberg was given the go-ahead. As she waited 71 days on the donors list to be matched she made plans to send her old heart to a specialist in Ohio who would encase it in plastic so it could be preserved forever.
“I’m going to have a beautiful teaching tool,” said Salberg, who founded The Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Association, an international organization that helps patients with the disease. Salberg was diagnosed with the disease when she was 12, and started the association after her sister died from it in 1995.
Salberg said HCM has a prevalence of 1 in 300 in the general population.
Group aims to reduce sudden cardiac deaths
Four days after Salberg’s surgery, Dr. Camacho brought out her frozen heart for Salberg to hold before shipping (via FedEx) to Ohio.
“I held her in my hands and I thanked her,” Salberg said, adding she was thrown by how heavy her heart felt. “She shouldn’t have lasted as long as she did.”
The heart is in Ohio and will be ready in four months. Salberg said she has plans to use 3D printers to replicate her heart.
“I do think it would be useful tool in the process of educating the community,” said Dr. Mark Zucker, director of the Cardiothoracic Transplantation Program, who worked with Salberg through her association prior to her treatment at Newark Beth Israel. “Lisa is one of the individuals who takes matters into her own hands.”
When Salberg woke up at Newark Beth Israel after her heart transplant surgery, she said for the first time since she was 12 years old, her heart felt still. She could no longer constantly feel her heart beat.
“It was quiet and it was peaceful,” Salberg told NJ Advance Media hours before leaving the hospital. “I’ve never known what it’s like to have a normal, healthy heart.”
She said her husband had plans to cook her a lobster dinner for Valentine’s Day. “I’m going to cuddle up with my family on my couch and enjoy being home,” she said.
Karen Yi may be reached at kyi@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter at @karen_yi or on Facebook.
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