Lives in the balance
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As Brenda Ortiz gets a new life with a new heart, Joe Jaramillo struggles to find a donor
4/12/2008 - 4/13/08
Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning, Santa Fean Brenda Ortiz, 40, can be found on the treadmills or in the swimming pool at El Gancho. She usually swims two miles in the pool and walks three miles on the treadmill. She's starting, for the first time in her life, to run.These were all things she couldn't do until approximately a year ago. She was born with dilated hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a condition that the American Heart Association said occurs when the heart muscle becomes inflamed and can't pump as it should.
When she was a child and other kids were running, jumping and playing around, Ortiz was sitting on the sidelines, tired and afraid that anything she did would make things worse.
"It was hard," Ortiz said. "I was restricted from a lot of sports and doing what I loved to do — swimming."
She had her first open-heart surgery in 1983. The day after the surgery, doctors told Ortiz they'd have to put in a pacemaker. For 23 years, she did fine. She still couldn't do physical activities and was still fatigued all the time, but she was grateful that she had no medical problems that needed attention.
As the years went on, her heart condition got worse until, in 2005, the organ nearly gave up.
On May 15, 2005, she got sick. She couldn't do the few physical activities she was able to do before because she had constant trouble breathing.
After a few weeks in the hospital, she was told she had three options: change her pacemaker, change her medicine or get a heart transplant.
After seven months of trying the first two options, Ortiz and her doctors opted for the transplant. She was quickly evaluated and declared a candidate, and on Jan. 4, 2006, she was put on the donor list. On March 13, 2006, she received a new heart.
"I was very lucky," Ortiz said with a glimmer of tears in her brown eyes. "I was very fortunate that a loving family came forward and gave me the gift of life."
Ortiz took a moment to fight back tears when talking about her donor family and the
14-year-old's heart they gave to her. She said she will always be grateful to them.
"Life is good now," Ortiz said. "I never knew life could be this good."
Not as lucky
In February 2007, Joe Jaramillo went to the doctor for a physical and everything checked out. That's why he was taken by surprise by the life-threatening heart attack he suffered in October 2007 that left him in need of a heart transplant.
His wife, Annie Jaramillo, was told her husband might not make it.
"They all thought he wasn't going to pull through," Annie said. Miraculously, the 62-year-old survived. In order to live a normal life again, however, he will need a heart transplant.
In February 2008, Jaramillo told his story at St. Vincent Regional Medical Center, sitting in a black wheelchair with an oxygen tube strapped securely behind his ears and his feet resting in his slippers.
It was at this hospital where the doctors told him he was probably going to die, Jaramillo said. He didn't, but by the time the three-month hospital stay was over, the medical bills had piled up to more than $300,000, not including the transplant evaluation and the transplant itself, which has yet to be performed.
Jaramillo had to take early retirement from the construction business, so his Social Security benefit came to only $800 a month.
Getting a transplant is a difficult undertaking, but for Jaramillo, it's even harder.
He has yet to be evaluated because his Medicaid was cut off, leaving him without insurance and without hope to pay his medical bills. The people from Medicaid claim that Jaramillo makes too much money to qualify with his $800-a-month Social Security check.
"If I don't get insurance, there's no way I can afford a (transplant)," Jaramillo said.
His daughter, Louise Martinez, said she's confident they'll get insurance — it's just a minor detail.
"The important part is the donor," Martinez said.
Surprisingly, none of the obstacles have brought him down. He still sits around and cracks jokes with his wife and daughters.
Jaramillo's children have raised approximately $4,000 to help him cover medical bills, but they're not anywhere close to where they need to be. They are calling on the community to help by donating to a fund in Joe Jaramillo's name at Century Bank.
Little-known fact
Brenda Ortiz was lucky, Joe Jaramillo hasn't been yet, but the two both have one thing in common: They are both minorities, which makes it harder for them to get a transplant.
According to Maria Sanders of the New Mexico Donor Services, this is because of genetics and a lack of matching donors.
"What we have found is that when we have a minority donor, a minority recipient will do better with that organ after the transplant," Sanders said.
Sanders said before organs are transplanted, genetic tests are done on both donor and recipient to see if they are a match; and most times minorities are matched with one another.
Sanders explained that recipients do better with organs from their specific background, for example, Latino recipients match better with Latino donors.
Sanders said more donors are needed, and that it's imperative that minorities sign up to help save lives.
Donate life
If there is any month to be more aware of the need for organ donors, it's April, National Donate Life Month. There are 98,358 people waiting for transplants, 2671 of whom need a heart. Of the 98,358, 591 are New Mexicans.
According to a news release from New Mexico Donor Services, one organ donor can save as many as eight lives and help more than 50 people through eye and tissue donations. The release also stated that as many as 18 people die every day in the U.S. while waiting for an organ transplant.
"We have Joe, who is waiting for a heart and doing everything possible to ensure that he stays healthy," Sanders said. "The only way he's going to get a heart is if another person is willing to register."
Everyone can be an organ donor.
"Some people do state that they don't sign up to be an organ donor because of religious beliefs, but most major religions now encourage their members to register as organ donors," Sanders said. "We still have not found a religion who says 'We are unwilling to save a person's life.'
"It's a very generous act
that people do when they sign up to be organ donors," Sanders said.
To become an organ donor, there are a few options: Individuals can become an organ donor when renewing their New Mexico driver's license; they can fill out an organ-donor card for their wallet; they can send a notification card to
their friends and family so they know they're donors; or they can request a donor sticker to put on a current license or
ID card by calling 800-843-7672 or e-mailing info@donatelifenm.org.
Whatever choice a person makes, they should discuss the decision with their family, as it is the family who ultimately makes the arrangement to donate a person's organs.
"If there were more people out there to donate organs, a lot of people would be able to live," Ortiz said.
"If you think you're tool old or too sick to donate, think again," said Jeffrey Hockersmith, a Santa Fean who had a liver transplant because of a long battle with hepatitis C after a bad blood transfusion. "There are so many different parts of a human's body that can be recycled and bring relief to suffering people."
"I didn't realize how important it is to donate," Jaramillo said. "If you're at a point where you're not going to make it, why bury them with you when somebody else can use them?"
Contact Ana Maria Trujillo at 986-3084 or atrujillo@sfnewmexican.com.
