The holidays can bring up a lot of memories and emotions. We spoke to one Tampa man who says they remind him of how lucky he is to be alive.
“I’m just appreciating the things in life we take for granted,” Jack Dikranian said, sitting alongside his wife, Tiffany. “Going to dinner. Just as simple as it sounds, just doing something together, just having the next day together.”
Jack battled cancer as a child. The treatments left him with a weakened heart, which set the stage for a lifetime of health challenges.
Last year, on Thanksgiving Day, Jack and his wife Tiffany got a call they’d been waiting for and desperately needed. Jack was being given a chance at a new heart, the solution to his congestive heart failure.
“I got the call at 2:30 in the morning,” Tiffany Dikranian said. “There’s a donor heart available. We’re going to match it in the next few hours. We’ll let you know. The procedure then got scheduled for the day after Thanksgiving.”
But when the new heart began to fail, and a second transplant didn’t appear to be a viable option, Tiffany and the Tampa General Hospital doctors were compelled to take a leap of faith.
Jack would become the first person in Florida to benefit from a new heart pump technology, the Impella RP Flex Heart Pump.
Impella RP Flex was implanted, allowing Jack’s heart to rest and recover. Within a few weeks, Jack’s heart function had improved and Impella was removed.
Tampa General Hospital’s Medical Director of the Mechanical Circulatory Support (MCS) Program, Dr. Ioana Dumitru, was behind the operation.
“This was, for Jack, a life-saving intervention,” Dr. Dumitru said.
Asked how she felt to be the first in Florida to use the device in this way, Dr. Dumitri said, “It’s a mixture of excitement and tension, as no matter how prepared you are, you are still dealing with a new device with potential complications.”
Dr. Dumitru said TGH is at the forefront of many innovations, particularly in the area of cardiovascular medicine.
One year later and healthier than ever, Jack has but one word, to describe how he feels today — “blessed.”
He said he is not taking a single heartbeat for granted, and while he’s grateful for the life-saving technology, he’s also grateful to the one who never left his side, his wife.
“I’m just blessed that she was there,” Jack said.
Since Jack’s operation, Dr. Dumitru says this technology has been used roughly two dozen times at Tampa General Hospital.
See the full segment: Tampa man was the 1st in Florida to receive this life-saving heart procedure
