By KELLY WILSON
Herald-Whig Staff Writer
Michael Price's heart doesn't beat.
It hums.
And that hum, the sound created from Price's mechanical heart pump, is music to his ears because the device is keeping him alive while awaiting a heart transplant.
"Without this pump, I'd be dead," said Price, 41, of LaBelle, Mo.
Price has been having heart trouble for 11 years, since his first heart attack at age 30. Over the next decade, he had five more heart attacks, a triple bypass, a stroke and stents placed in his coronary arteries.
In October, he went into cardiac arrest and his body started to swell as it retained fluids.
"We thought we were going to lose him," said Michael Wear, Price's caretaker and half brother.
"They had to resuscitate me (at Blessing Hospital). I said out loud, 'Uh-oh, I'm gone I guess,' " Price recalls. "A nurse jumped on top of my chest, started doing CPR on me and brought me back."
Dr. Rishi Ghaneker, a nephrologist, and Dr. Wissam Derian, a cardiologist, both of Quincy Medical Group, tended to Price during that time. Derian could see that Price's situation was dire and transferred him by air to Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, where he was placed on a heart transplant list.
"He was in ... end-stage heart failure," Derian said. "He almost died."
Price now has a radical new heart pump called the HeartMate II Left Ventricular Assist Device, which takes over the functions of his diseased left ventricle and helps the heart pump blood.
The electronic motor drives a small rotor, similar to a propeller, that pushes blood into the aorta and out through the body.
"It does what the heart should do," Derian said.
The mechanical heart needs new batteries every six hours, and Price has to change the sterile dressing where the driveline enters his stomach daily. At night, he plugs the heart pump in.
The device, implanted at Barnes-Jewish, has brought Price from Class 4, or end-stage, heart failure to Class 2 heart failure, which means he only gets short of breath with exertion, Derian said.
Before Price received the mechanical heart, his heart functioned at 10 percent. Now it functions at 40 percent.
"This is a bridge (while waiting) for a heart transplant," Derian said. "It can last five years, but we hope he can get a transplant before that."
Price is on numerous medications to keep his blood pressure down, makes several trips to the doctor's office for checkups on his heart pump, and will begin physical therapy to prepare for the heart transplant.
"I feel wonderful, 100 percent better," he said. "I'm able to get up and move around. There are some things I still can't do, but I can walk through Wal-Mart or the mall."
Derian says Price's turnaround has been "amazing" and is grateful the mechanical heart technology was available.
"He was on the best medicines we had, but they didn't work," he said. "There was nothing else we could do. ... (Now), he looks great. He's going to make it."
Price credits both Quincy doctors for giving him his new lease on life.
"Both Drs. Ghaneker and Derian are a great team," he said. "They helped give my life back."
-- kwilson@whig.com/221-3391
