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Amid pandemic, boy gets new heart

Denise McGaughran poses with her son Dillan, who underwent a heart transplant last year. Photo by April Gamiz/The Morning Call

CATASAUQUA, Pa. — Dillan McGaughran is longing for the first signs of spring, when he can put on his catcher’s mitt and start playing baseball again, enjoying the fresh air and the crack of the bat as it sends the ball soaring over the fields at Catasauqua Park, where the 12-year-old plays with his dad and five brothers.

McGaughran’s heart was always in the game, but because of a condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, he hasn’t always been able to play. This year will be different for the Catasauqua Middle School student who, in June — in the midst of the pandemic — received a heart transplant from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

“I want to play baseball and sports at a competitive level and be able to run and jump and be kind of a ‘normal kid,'” he said.

It’s been a long recovery, but Dillan and his mother, Denise McGaughran, already notice a difference. Before the transplant, his walk to Catasauqua Middle School would take 20 minutes, stopping half-way up the hill to school. Now Dillan’s walk is cut down to 12 minutes with no breaks.

“It’s awesome. I think the hardest thing to know is that we didn’t realize how much he struggled, because he was able to manage it so well,” his mother said.

She first noticed Dillan might be having issues when he was 5 years old. Although Dillan was an active boy who loved all sports, including football and wrestling, he always seemed tired and winded.

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy causes the heart muscle to become abnormally thick, making it hard to pump blood. It’s the most common cause of sudden cardiac death in young people and athletes under the age of 35, according to the American Heart Association.

Denise and her husband, Michael McGaughran, are both carriers for the condition, discovered after members of their respective families suffered from it. Denise decided Dillan should get tested.

The cardiologist noticed some abnormalities in Dillan’s heart and suggested he stop playing high-impact sports like football and wrestling, Denise said. Dillan continued with baseball until he was 9 years old, but as his condition progressed, doctors told Dillan he should give up sports altogether.

“I played baseball for four years, and then I eventually reached a breaking point where I reached my ceiling because I couldn’t push myself anymore and my doctor’s didn’t want me to push myself anymore,” he said. “That’s when I stopped playing baseball.”

Despite the condition progressing, Denise was surprised last February, when doctors at CHOP suggested a heart transplant.

Despite the pandemic, Dillan didn’t have to wait long. He was on the transplant list by April and the McGaughrans received a call on June 14 that a heart from an unidentified donor was available.

Transplants slowed dramatically at the start of the pandemic, but the number performed has since rebounded and is similar to what it was prior to the outbreak, said Matthew O’Connor, a cardiologist and director of the transplant program at CHOP.

Nationwide, there were 39,704 organ transplants in 2019 and 39,029 in 2020, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing.

The pandemic created additional stress for doctors and patients, some of whom had to delay procedures because they tested positive for the virus.

“I think the added uncertainty on top of an already uncertain situation makes it worse. We tell families the waiting time for a heart transplant is approaching one year, even in the best-case scenario,” O’Connor said. “We were very concerned early in the pandemic when we didn’t know how widespread this virus was.”

CHOP performed eight heart transplants last year, including Dillan’s.

Dillan remembers playing video games and just sitting down to eat pizza when his family received the call to leave for the hospital where he would spend the next two weeks.

Those first weeks were a blur, as doctors tried to keep Dillan comfortable on painkillers. One of the hardest parts was not being able to lift his arms above his head for eight weeks after surgery because the procedure involves cracking the sternum to access the heart.

Around Thanksgiving, Dillan suffered a setback when he developed an infection that required the placement of a pacemaker, but he’s back home now and continuing to recover.

He will also take immunosuppressive drugs for the rest of his life to make sure his body doesn’t reject the transplant. This part has been especially stressful during the pandemic.

“There are 20 people who die every day waiting for a transplant,” said Denise, who is an instructor of health technology at the Career Institute of Technology in Easton. “That’s a profound number and we were so blessed to receive our gift in the middle of a pandemic. Without it, who knows where we could be right now.”

There are 108,000 people nationwide waiting for an organ transplant, said Howard Nathan, president of Gift of Life Donor Program, which helped coordinate McGaughran’s heart transplant.

Gift of Life is one of 58 organizations across the United States that was appointed by the federal government to coordinate organ transplants. Gift of Life oversees the eastern half of Pennsylvania, Southern New Jersey and Delaware.

There are about 5,000 people in the region awaiting transplants, Nathan said.

In the early stages of the pandemic, a lack of coronavirus testing slowed transplants, and there were safety considerations because it wasn’t clear if donors might be infected.

Donations still aren’t being accepted from those who are positive for coronavirus, Nathan said.

Despite this, for the 13th consecutive year, Gift of Life was in the lead for most donations among all 58 organ procurement organizations in the United States in 2020.

Gift of Life worked with 619 organ donors, resulting in 1,619 transplants last year.

The Philadelphia-based organization works with 128 hospitals throughout the region, 15 of which perform transplants. Lehigh Valley Health Network is the only hospital in the Lehigh Valley that performs transplants, Nathan said. LVHN does kidney and pancreas transplants.

For those in need of a kidney or liver transplant, a donation from a living donor, such as a relative, is an option. Nathan believes the decrease in last year’s number of transplants was primarily impacted by living donors delaying the process, likely because they were concerned about contracting coronavirus in a medical setting.

There were 7,391 organ transplants from living donors in 2019, and 5,724 in 2020, according to the UNOS.

Denise wants to raise awareness about organ donation, including giving blood, which she plans to do this year. One donor can provide life-saving organs for up to eight people and tissue, such as corneas and skin grafts, to 100 individuals, according to Gift of Life.

“My goal this year is to donate blood and just be kind. I want to give back the kindness that was given to us,” she said.

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