Groundbreaking transplants at Mayo Clinic help save people's lives: Here are their stories

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. - April is National Donate A Life Month, which aims to encourage Americans to register as an organ, eye, and tissue donor, as well as honoring those who have already helped save lives.

At the Mayo Clinic in the Phoenix area, medical professionals perform the most transplants out of anywhere in the country, with more than 800 'solid organ' transplants just last year alone. People travel from all over the world to access their care, and many cases are a first of their kind.

First triple transplant surgery saves Oklahoma man

One of the people who accessed transplant care at the Mayo Clinic is Doyle Duke. The 54-year-old is the first person to receive a triple organ transplant in Arizona.

"[I was] almost to the point of I knew I didn’t have much time left," said Duke. "I feel great a lot better than I had been."

Duke traveled to Phoenix from Oklahoma for the procedure.

"It’s great to hear your heart again," said Duke. "Feel your heart and it beating strong. Thank God for my donor. None of this is possible without my donor."

Duke’s problems started as a teen, and those problems restricted him from playing sports at the age of 14. It was discovered during a routine physical that Duke had a murmur in his heart, which turned out to be Idiopathic Hypertrophic Subaortic Stenosis.

"That’s all I did. That’s all I wanted to be was a professional baseball player. That was it. That was my life," said Duke.

Despite intervention and surgeries, Duke's heart disease advanced. It later resulted in heart failure that impacting his liver and kidneys. By then, it was time for Duke to get a new heart, and that was something he didn’t think was possible, until he came to the Mayo Clinic.

"When I was young, they told me I would never have a transplant. I would never make it. I wouldn’t have a transplant," siad Duke. "Lookie here. I have three of them, so never give up. There’s always people out there in need. Just mark the box. Just mark the box, please. People need it. People need the help, people like me."

For now, Duke says he's not only grateful to have his life back, but to the person who gave that to him

"I'm standing here with three organs that ain't mine, so they are now. I’m going to take them for a roll around the block," said Duke.

"It was really hard seeing him like that and everything else, so when they told us about the organs, I was really excited and scared at the same time," said Duke's wife, Billie Duke. "Now I’m really excited because he’s doing so well, and I’m ready for us to start living again."

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Special translator helps save Native lives

Communication is everything, especially when it comes to matters related to health, and that is where Silena Thomas comes in.

Thomas grew up on the Navajo Nation, and speaks fluent Navajo, a native language that is also known as Diné.

"A lot of patients are very intimated to come here. It’s such a huge facility," said Thomas.

Thomas has worked as a Patient Navigator serving American Indians and Alaska Natives for about a year at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale. From their very first appointment, she helps translate and walk patients through every step of their care, helping with questions, and even organizing the little things like transportation and accommodation.

Thomas said she has helped her own family translate her whole life.

"My mom is no longer with us, and my grandma is no longer with us, so I feel like this is something that she would be very proud of, knowing that I am continuing to do these for other patients, and being able to help and being able to help them understand their own healthcare needs," said Thomas.

Within the Navajo culture, there can be a stigma with getting a transplant, and that is something Thomas hopes to change.

"I wouldn’t say frowned upon, but it’s not something that is, you know, accepted, I guess, to get a transplant, because a deceased person's organ is coming into your body, and that could cause imbalance, and that is something that requires ceremonies and different things like that," said Thomas. "I think as with more knowledge and education, sometimes some patients are more, they’re having to weigh their options, and they are having to decide what they want."

Thanks to that education, the Mayo Clinic has seen a sharp rise in Navajo patients coming to their hospital.

Among the Navajo patients who have received care at the Mayo Clinic is Robert Monroe, who needed a kidney transplant.

"[Thomas has] been a big help. If I don’t understand, I ask her, and she would interpret for me," said Monroe. "I would like to say thank you to the people that gave me the kidney, and they gave me a new life and a lot of things to look forward to."

Monroe made the three-hour journey from the Navajo Nation several times to meet with his doctors, but he says that was nothing when compared to the trips he would take to dialysis: if the roads were washed out, it would take well over an hour for Monroe to get to his local clinic.

Monroe's wife, Jackie Johnson, would sell homemade lolly pops to pay for gas.

"Four years. He was on dialysis for four years," said Johnson. "When he went to dialysis three times a week, that really drained him from dialysis. He couldn’t drive home. I had to take him, take him in, drive him home, but once he got home, he went to sleep. He would sleep the rest of the day."

After speaking with Thomas, Monroe was placed on the transplant list, and in August 2022, they got the call about a matched kidney.

"It was 10:30. We got the call, they told him he can come down here by 3 o’clock in the afternoon," said Johnson. "The next morning, after his surgery, he wanted to walk, and they kept telling him no, you can’t walk, you have to wait, get some rest. So I guess they helped him up, and he walked around the nurses station twice, and they couldn’t believe it that he wanted to walk after his surgery. That was amazing."

"For that operation, we don’t take out their old kidneys. We put another kidney in, and that kidney provides enough kidney function to get them off dialysis," said Mayo Clinic Transplant Surgeon Dr. Jack Harbell.

Dr. Harbell says kidneys are the most common transplants they see: in 2022 alone, they performing more than 500 kidney transplants.

"Transplant has a huge impact on a person's life," said Dr. Harbell. "The dramatic change from before a transplant to sometimes on death's door to almost back to a regular normal life after transplant is something that is really rewarding to see. It's a privilege to be able to participate in, and it’s something that I look forward to every day."

Although Monroe’s English sounds perfect, he says he still struggles with certain words. Thomas has made all the difference, and made him feel comfortable.

"I would say thank you. The people here changed my life, and it seems like I have been doing stuff that I have always wanted to do," said Monroe.

Monroe says he now has a lot to catch up on. He plans to work on his house, as well as others, fixing roofs, electrical work, carpentry, as well as a couple cars he needs to fix up.

"I have more energy, especially when I am at home. I hardly sit down, keep going, and then she asks me to stop, come inside and take a rest. Then, when she starts doing something, I am out the door," said Monroe.

California woman saved by a ‘heart in a box’

The Mayo Clinic's medical team takes on the most complicated cases, including a patient from California who though she was just getting one transplant - but as it turned out, her case was much more dire.

"I’m planning on living," said Susan Long. "I have a lot to give, a lot to live for, and I can’t wait to get out there again."

Doctors in California gave Susan Long the heart-stopping news. She had just three to size months left to live unless she received a lifesaving liver transplant.

"It was just a pull down weight," Long said. "It was just pain. It was long before they finally said, 'You need this. There’s no if ands or buts, you need it.'"

Long made the drive from California to Arizona to be seen by the top surgeons at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale and to hopefully get a new liver in time. 

But soon after the clinic took on her case, they discovered she needed more than just a liver.

 "I had a transplant of my heart and my liver," Long said.

A heart and liver transplant is something doctors at the Mayo Clinic say is rare, and unfortunately in her case, more complications surfaced. She had a high number of antibodies that could reject the new organs.

"In this case that we had the presence of high concentration of antibodies in the blood or what we call a highly sensitized patient," said Dr. Bashar Aqel, chair and director of the Mayo Clinic Transplant Center. "If you put the heart first, those antibodies will attack the heart, the new heart and will cause really significant rejection and will damage the heart in a very short period of time."

Aqel says when a performing a multi-transplant operation, the new heart typically needs to be added first because it's more sensitive and has less than three to four hours to be transplanted after leaving the donor body.

Because Long had so many antibodies, they had to perform a miracle and add the liver first.

"In simple words, [the liver] works like a sponge," Aqel explained. "It absorbs those antibodies so that the environment will be very favorable when we place the heart. 

"Now doing that means there is a challenge as we do the liver transplant," he continued. "This new heart is still outside the body and the more time we spend outside the body, the less likely we will be successful with the transplant, and in order to overcome that challenge we decided to use another technique or innovation that has been adopted here at Mayo Clinic, which is the heart in the box."

The Mayo Clinic is the only hospital in Arizona that uses the heart in a box system. It allows surgeons to remove the heart from the donor and add it to a special box that resuscitates it. 

The technology extends the time from retrieval and transplant from four hours to up to ten hours.

"The heart was placed in the heart in a box machine, which allowed it to get all the blood and the nutrients while we are doing the liver transplant, and the new liver will act as a sponge absorbing those antibodies and then the heart was transplanted after that," Aqel said. "Guess what, the success of what we have seen has been an unprecedented success, and the patient is doing great."

"I am feeling great, how I felt before…I have to remind myself I actually have a donor's organ inside of me, and I am very thankful," Long said.

For now, Susan Long says she wants to make a difference and get as many people as she can to be an organ donor.

"I feel like I have a different calling now, I want to give, I want to get the word out more," Long said.

More than 1,500 people are still waiting for transplants in Arizona, Aqel said.

"And unfortunately and tragically up to 20 people die every day without getting a lifesaving transplant," the doctor explained. "With each donor up to 8 lives can be saved, in addition to 75 other lives [that] can be touched through tissue and organ donation as well as blood and marrow donations."

Across the country, more than 100,000 people need lifesaving transplants. You can help by signing up with Donate Life.