Sherri Selph: Longest Living Heart Assist Pump Recipient
November 19, 2006 by Lei
Filed under Diseases & Conditions
Congratulations to Sherri Selph who has celebrated the seventh anniversary of receiving a heart assist pump in 1999 at the University of Alabama Birmingham. She holds the record for having had an assist pump the longest of anyone in history. Most pump recipients live an average of two years with a few living to four or five years.
From the New York Times in 2002 via The Lasker Foundation:
One person who is not troubled is Sherri Selph, a 49-year-old patient who learned about the heart pump on the Internet and talked her way into the clinical trial. Three years ago, too weak from heart failure even to dress herself and too overweight to receive a donated heart, she signed what she calls “my death warrant,” an order for doctors not to revive her if her heart gave out.
Today, the heart pump ticks away, 80 beats a minute, inside Mrs. Selph’s chest. During the day, she wears a battery pack slung around her shoulders, holster style, that attaches to the pump through a line protruding from her abdomen. She plugs into a power charger at night. Her friends call her “the electric lady.”
Most of Mrs. Selph’s fellow study subjects have died, and Mrs. Selph is on her second pump; the first one broke. “Sure, it cost $100,000 to have the surgery to get this,” she said. “But I’ve had almost no medical bills, compared to what I had before the pump. And it’s kept me alive.”
Here’s wishing Sherri many more years of a hearty life!
Ledger-Enquirer.com, November 18, 2006
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