Heart transplant extends life of CHS 40-year grad

Phil Weitz stands on the front steps of Colfax High School last week. He will attend his 40th class reunion this summer with his new heart.

Phil Weitz has a gift that keeps on giving: every day, every hour, every minute, every second. A gift of a heart that keeps on beating.

“Every morning when I get up, I go outside and thank God for another day,” Weitz said. “I give thanks to everyone. Life has a whole new meaning for me.”

The 1975 Colfax High School graduate, who now lives near Umatilla, Ore., was in Colfax last week helping to make plans for his class reunion. During his high school years, he was a distance runner for the track team.

Weitz went to Spokane Community College and then worked as a boiler and refrigeration mechanic for a potato processing plant in Hermiston.

Heart problems run in the Weitz family. Weitz’s father Don died of a stroke in 2000 at the age of 77, and his mother Georgia died of coronary heart disease the same year at age 70. His oldest brother, Donald, Jr., also had a triple bypass.

When the first symptoms of heart problems occurred the first part of 2012, Weitz said he became easily tired but attributed it to getting older, not heart issues. He had no chest pains but couldn’t breathe well. The symptoms went away and he went about his normal routine for another week until a more severe attack occurred.

It was the evening of Feb. 6, 2012, and Weitz was outside his home with his dogs when he found it hard to breathe again but this time it was worse. He got in the house and called 9-1-1 and told them he thought he would pass out any minute.

An ambulance first took him to the Hermiston hospital and then he was sent by ambulance to Kadlec Hospital in the Tri-Cities.

Doctors started his heart twice and told his wife that he was not going to survive.

MedStar, equipped with an entire mobile heart crew, flew him to Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane. By then he was unconscious. The next thing he knew, he woke up in a hospital room a week later.

He contracted an infection and doctors weren’t sure why. While fighting the infection, he had hallucinations of all kinds, telling doctors and nurses he was dead, that he was in a Chinese recovery center and several other hallucinations until finally a psychiatrist asked if he wanted to live.

“During that time I lost the fear of dying because of all the prayers people were saying for me,” he said.

Weitz was raised in the United Methodist Church in Colfax but as an adult he didn’t attend church regularly.

“I knew God was there, that there is a Power higher than us, but I just didn’t practice it,” he said.

Now he said he has a stronger belief and feels blessed by his journey.

He was in Sacred Heart for two months. After the infection cleared up, a mechanical pump was installed to keep blood flowing through his system and he was placed on a waiting list for a heart transplant.

He lost weight on his already tall, skinny frame. He was released from the hospital at the end of March.

He didn’t go back to work per his doctors’ advice. He thinks he will never go back to work but believes his mission now is working on donor awareness.

Back in Umatilla, Weitz concentrated on healing. Doctors had given him strict instructions if he wanted to get on the transplant list.

Number one priority was no more cigarettes.

“I tell people I had to die to quit smoking,” Weitz said.

He also had to get his Type 1 diabetes under control. He was diagnosed with diabetes when he was 27.

In October 2012, he received a call from Sacred Heart that they had accepted him as a candidate for a heart transplant.

At that time, Sacred Heart was the second best hospital in the country for successful heart transplants.

Weitz rented an apartment near the hospital at the end of October and started getting ready for a new heart. Hospital staff explained every detail, including medications and death.

When he wasn’t at the hospital learning about the transplant, Weitz said he walked a lot and “bummed around.”

Then one day when he was at a grocery store getting supplies for Thanksgiving, his cell phone rang. It was the hospital telling him that he was getting a new heart.

“I about fell through the floor,” he said. “I told the grocery store people and they all started clapping.”

He rushed to the hospital’s emergency entrance and threw his keys to the security guard, telling him the news.

“If you want your truck back you better wait a minute,” the guard told him.

On the “heart floor” in Sacred Heart, Weitz waited in a room. They prepped him for surgery and he waited.

“I was scared,” he said. “I started shaking so bad my hips hurt.”

The doctors gave him medication to calm his nerves as he waited, but then determined the heart was not suitable. This was just the first trial run.

The second call came just before Thanksgiving. Most of his family was with him for the holiday and he went through the same routine, only this time he wasn’t as nervous or scared. After being prepped for surgery and waiting all day, he was told the second heart was also determined to be unsuitable. They all went back to his apartment.

The next phone call wouldn’t come for almost two weeks. Weitz said he had almost given up.

When the phone rang this time and the voice on the other end said, “It’s a go,” he was calmer.

The two main surgeons on the transplant team were Dr. Timothy Icenogle and the late Dr. David Sandler. The transplant took place Dec. 2, 2012.

Weitz woke up the next day after surgery, and even though he was hooked up to IVs, a breathing tube and monitoring equipment, he felt so good he wanted to get up and move.

“Hey, cowboy, slow down,” hospital staff members replied.

But by that afternoon he was so persistent, they allowed him to get up and walk around the nurses’ station with a little help.

After carefully being watched for symtoms of rejection, he was released by the hospital Dec. 14.

“It was quite a Christmas gift,” he said.

He remained in Spokane for a while, being tested constantly for the possibility of rejection.

“It was not a lot of fun,” he said.

He went home to Umatilla about March 1.

“I never had fear,” he said. “I pretty much do what I want.”

Everything is working well, he said. He makes a trip to Spokane on a regular basis for checkups and an annual two-day exam. He takes a bevy of pills, including anti-rejection medications. He carries a container that separates each dose for morning and evening each day of the week.

Doctors have told him he was an “easy match,” and that they “didn’t save me; God did.”

Weitz is divorced and has a son Jordan who has two children and works for Portland Parks and Recreation, and a daughter Stephanie who is a nurse in Portland.

As Weitz recovered, he thought about the donor and the donor’s family. He didn’t know much about the donor, but he thought about the man’s family and what they must be going through. He wanted them to know how thankful he was, so he wrote a letter to the man’s family.

Weitz later found out that the donor was Gabriel Barrera, a native Mexican man who was living in California and who came to the United States hoping to make a better life for his family. Barrera was walking to an ATM after work one evening in late November 2012 when he fainted and hit his head, suffering a devastating brain injury. He was only 50 years old.

His family decided to donate his organs. The only organ that was used outside of California was the heart that Weitz now has.

After about a year, Elibeth Bautista, one of Barrera’s daughters, replied to Weitz’s letter.

“I started bawling because of how precious it was,” Weitz said.

Eventually they exchanged contact information.

“The first call, both of us were crying and I just kept thinking, ‘Don’t hang up, don’t hang up.’ She said, ‘I don’t know what to say,’ and I finally said ‘Don’t hang up.’”

They now talk often by phone or text, and have developed what Weitz calls a “very comfortable relationship.”

Weitz said there’s a “healing connection” with Barrera’s daughter.

He now calls her his “other daughter.”

“She healed knowing that I lived,” Weitz said.

They haven’t met yet, but Weitz hopes they will meet in the next several months.

“My donor’s daughter wants to hear my heart,” Weitz said.

“The only guilt I have is only waiting six weeks when so many others wait longer or die waiting. People die waiting.”

His passion now is donor awareness.

“I never try to persuade anybody,” Weitz said. “You may not be the donor, you may be like me, a recipient.”

He dispels any myths about being a donor.

“Nobody’s dying to keep you alive,” he emphasized.

In his support group which meets in the Tri-Cities, Weitz said all the heart transplant recipients are patients of the two surgeons who did his transplant.

Weitz feels he has a mission and joined Donate Life Northwest to spread the word about donor awareness.

He is training to speak in front of school children and will cover an area that includes Pendleton, Hermiston and Walla Walla.

“Wherever they want me to go, I’ll go,” he said.

As Weitz contemplates his journey, he believes he’s a changed man.

“I have a new love and respect for life,” he said. “I take nothing for granted.

“I am so much more aware. I keep a good attitude and try to be happy. I may come off a little silly, but that’s just because I’m happy.

“I’m always thankful to God for my donor,” he concluded.