I've had a 25-year journey through heart disease culminating in a heart transplant. I am now a survivor of two years. Great progress has been made since the first heart transplant 50 years ago but interestingly enough, what killed Louis Washkansky, Christiaan Barnard’s first transplant survivor, was not the transplant, but the misunderstanding of the use of the immunosuppressants, or anti-rejection drugs.  Surgical teams have the actual retrieval and transplanting of the heart down pat. The problems arise, as they did in the original heart transplant, from the rejection drugs.  It seems they found something that kind of worked, kind of did the job, and left it at that. It's not enough, we must have more research and more results improving these drugs because they in themselves are killers.  Some of the side effects are osteoporosis, diabetes, liver disease, and deadliest of all, cancer.  Amy Silverstein said it most eloquently on 60 Minutes earlier this spring.  Three weeks later, she died from the side effects of the rejection drugs.   

Watch it here:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amy-silverstein-immunosuppressive-drugs-for-organ-transplants/

I now walk for her in support of a greater study of immunosuppressants.  Join me in the Heart Walk 2023 and let's see if we can't make a difference.