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A heart at work Five years after a transplant, former Pitt athlete is back in the swim Tuesday, September 12, 2000 By Deborah Weisberg
When world-class swimmer Ron Gainsford, 71, of Ross, wins medals, he thinks of the young man to whom he owes his life.
"I think, 'I didn't do this myself. We did this together,'" said Gainsford, a former college swimmer and head coach, and a bronze medalist in the World Masters Swimming Championships 2000 in Munich last month. "Without him and his family, I wouldn't be here."
Gainsford is talking of the 25-year-old car accident victim whose heart he received in 1994, after spending two weeks in a hospital bed with cardiac damage so severe nothing short of a transplant could save him.
A three-time All-American swimmer at the University of Pittsburgh from 1952-54 and head swimming coach at the University of West Virginia from 1956-58, Gainsford also was a retired gym teacher with a family history of cardiac disease. He suffered two heart attacks in six years. The first, when he was 54, came as he did yard work; the second, and more serious one at 60, as he drove to his scuba shop in Bellevue.
Dr. Lewis Rappaport, a UPMC health system cardiologist, happened to be on duty when Gainsford arrived at West Penn Hospital's emergency room after the second heart attack. He performed an angioplasty on Gainsford, whose arteries had narrowed to the point that his heart pumped at only one-sixth its normal capacity. Bypass surgery would have been pointless on a heart that badly damaged, said Rappaport, who sat with his patient all night.
"He was pretty much on his deathbed at one point," Rappaport said. "Not a lot of people are coherent when their blood pressure is 60 [about half the normal reading] and they're on multi-intravenous medications. But he was fighting to stay alert so he could get his affairs in order."
"It was tough, especially since I was alone," said Gainsford, a lifelong bachelor. "I got through it, but I don't know how, except that the will to live is very strong. People don't die too easily."
Over the next two years, his heart became increasingly weak and walking even short distances became a chore. "I was really so sick, I didn't know how much longer I had. I was passing out two, three times a day."
A childhood friend found him one day late in 1994 floundering on a street corner, in the Oakland neighborhood where they'd grown up, and urged him to get to a hospital. He was put on a heart pump and the transplant list.
Gainsford, at 64, was one year under the usual eligibility cut-off age, but had the rare A/B blood type that would improve his chances of being matched with a suitable donor. In addition, except for his heart, he was in excellent shape.
After the transplant, Gainsford was hospitalized for two months while struggling with infection and post-surgery trauma to other organs. Once 5 feet, 11 inches and 175 pounds, he weighed 138 when he was finally sent home with anti-rejection medication and orders to walk for exercise.
Five years into recovery -- a medical milestone for transplant survivors -- Gainsford felt an impulse to return to the water.
"I tell patients, just because you've had a cardiac event doesn't mean you can't get back to a normal lifestyle," Rappaport said. "I encourage patients to have an open mind about activities."
Swimming strengthens the heart and other muscles by enabling them to use oxygen and nutrients more effectively. It also improves endurance and helps patients stay motivated.
Though Gainsford had been scuba diving for most of his adult life, it had been years since he had done the butterfly or any other competitive stroke.
"As soon as I started swimming, it felt good," he said. "I thought, 'This is where I belong.'"
As he regained old skills, such as racing starts and turns, his competitive drive returned. He switched from the Sewickley YMCA to the Team Pitt masters swimming program last year.
"He's the first in the pool and the last out," said masters coach Jennifer Michaels, 27, of Mt. Lebanon. "Practice starts at 5:45 a.m., but he's here and in the water by 5:30. Most of the masters swim three days a week. He swims six."
Michaels "kept a close eye" on Gainsford when he first joined Team Pitt, but quickly gained confidence in his abilities. "He's definitely got a lot of talent, and he's not afraid of working hard, and pushing himself. But he's sensible about it. He knows how to pace himself."
In April, Gainsford won third place in both the 50-yard backstroke and 50-yard breaststroke in the 70-to-75 age group at the U.S. Masters Short Course Swimming Championships in Indianapolis, and fourth, in the 50-yard butterfly. It pushed him to compete in Germany last month, where he placed fourth for his age in the 50-meter breaststroke -- missing first by a yard -- and sixth in the 50-meter butterfly.
Afterward, he was surprised when five European and Asian doctors sought him out to talk about his transplant.
A month ago, he placed third in the 50-meter breaststroke and fifth in both the 50-meter backstroke and 50-meter butterfly at the U.S. Masters National Swimming Championships in Baltimore.
"Not many masters swim all these events," said teammate Lonny Harrison, 52, a Bethel Park optometrist, who competed in Olympic trials 32 years ago. "He's a real inspiration. You figure, if he can pay that much attention to his health and his body, with what he's overcome, so can the rest of us.
"I remember when he told me he'd had a heart transplant, it took a minute for that to register," Harrison said. "When it did, I thought, 'Wow!' And here's this guy doing the butterfly, which is the hardest stroke there is, and always so positive, and always smiling."
Rappaport called Gainsford "an unusual case.
"Very few patients have the attitude he does, or work as hard at staying in shape," Rappaport said. "He tells me he feels as good now as he ever has. He's taking good care of his new heart."
Dr. Robert Kormos, UPMC Director of the Artificial Heart Program and Adult Cardiac Transplantation, and part of the team that performed the five-hour operation on Gainsford, agreed.
"He's surpassed our expectations," Kormos said of Gainsford. "Most transplant patients would find it a challenge just to go back to work, let alone be as active as he is."
After leaving Team Pitt practice, Gainsford heads for a pool in Gibsonia, where he teaches children to swim, four days a week.
He has corresponded with the parents of the man whose organ he received, and he said he thinks of them every time he accomplishes something he is proud of.
"In the beginning, I felt it wasn't my own heart," he said. "I'd sometimes have my head on my shoulder as I was falling asleep, and I could hear it beating, and I'd think, 'This isn't mine.' Now I feel it is my own.
"To have a new heart in my body has brought me closer to an appreciation of life, something most of us don't have until we think we're going to lose it." he said.
Deborah Weisberg is a freelance writer from the East End.
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