"My name is John Dougan. I left my wife and my kids, but I came back because I had a change of heart."

Dougan, 51, of Tamiment, Lehman Township, usually gets the audiences attention with that opener. Then the transplant recipient and president of the Northeastern Pennsylvania Transplant Support Group, frequently speaks at social functions about his experience with heart disease.

A condition his father suffered with until he died at the age of 41 and his five uncles suffered, all dying by the time they were 63. Dougan was 28 when he experienced his first heart attack. It was followed by attacks of angina and by 35, he had had a quadruple bypass operation. At the age of 46, Dougan, an electrical engineer went to Temple University in Philadelphia to receive a heart transplant.

His stay lasted three months. He told his wife that he had complete faith in his doctors. "While I was in the hospital I realized I was in the best place in the world," Dougan said. "They kept me alive by medicine and medical knowledge." Dougan began exercising regularly while waiting for his heart.

"If I kept in better shape it would be easier to recover from the transplant," Dougan said.
Meanwhile, his wife Mary gave him the utmost support. "She is the most important person in my life," Dougan said. "Without her this wouldn't have worked."

Dougan advises that the best supporter is your own spouse. The Dougan family includes a 23-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, and two sons, Andrew, 11-years-old and Ryan, 7-years-old.

"Andrew learned a lot while I was in the hospital," Dougan said. "He would sit with the nurses and ask questions about what was happening. At 7-years-old he experienced a lot."

Now Dougan says that he and his wife keep track on things the boys eat to make sure they don't have to go through the same ordeal.

Seeing his wife and kids only on the weekends while in the hospital, Dougan created a new family with the other heart recipients and the staff.

"This was the winter of 1995 and 1996 when we got the bad snowstorm," Dougan said. "Sometimes I didn't even see my family on the weekends because of the weather. So I created a lot of other friendships. Everyone intermingled."

Finally on March 1, 1996, after being in the hospital since December 12, 1995, Dougan was getting a new heart.

"I was lucky enough to get a heart quick," he said. "Now people wait nine months to a year for a new heart." Dougan says more people are now being diagnosed with heart disease and not enough people are donating organs.

Dougan was released from the hospital on March 13. Six months later he walked his sister down the aisle and everyone there thought it was a miracle. And just last summer he walked his own daughter down the aisle.

It's now been four years since the heart transplant. "If it wasn't for the kindness of a stranger, I wouldn't be here," he said about the donor heart.

"I'd like to see my little guys grow up," He said with a smile.

For information on becoming a donor, call 888-DONORS-1.

This story appeared on Page 8, Friday, October 13, 2000 in the Eastern Poconos Community News
(This story originally appeared in the Pocono Record)