Heart transplant patient lives extraordinary life Climbing France’s Mont Blanc is reserved for world-class mountain climbers. Recovering from heart disease by having a heart transplant and then going on to have a successful adult life and father five children is also being a world class skill. Doing both is extraordinary. Sylvain Bëdard of Montreal is an extraordinary man with a heartwarming life story. He is taking his story across Canada on what he calls a Transformative Journey – Engaging Life after Transplantation.” In 1980 Bedard’s sister, 18, died of cardiac arrest while she was exercising. That same year the 12-year-old boy from Montreal was diagnosed with cardiac hypertrophy, a hereditary disease that causes thickening of the heart tissue. Seven years later doctors began to discuss the possibility of a heart transplant. In 1993 at just 25 Bedard became the third Canadian to have an artificial pacemaker and defibrillator implanted. He had to wait another seven years before he was given what he calls the “the greatest gift in the world – a healthy heart.” The Christmas before his transplant he had been given a pair of running shoes but refused to wear them until his heart was healthy. Since his first steps in them as a healthy 32-year-old man those shoes have come along wherever he goes. His journeys the past 10 years have taken those shoes a great distance, from being the first Canadian heart transplant patient to reach the summit of Mont Blanc in 2003 to passing the 6,000-metre mark on Mount Sajama, Bolivia the following year. “The Transformative Journey speaking tour is an opportunity for me to connect with other transplant patients across Canada and their families to let them know they are not alone in the difficulties they experience in this journey,” Sylvain said in a press release. “There are resources available to them and they should be empowered to seek out information.”
August 17th, 2010