"Beast-faced human hearts", which we usually use to describe an animal that is fierce on the outside, but has a good quality on the inside. And in fact, sometimes human beings are not completely negative, some people seem to be ** on the surface, but their hearts are full of love and kindness.
Theresa Pokeley and Fiy challenged the boundaries of life and tried to combine the human body with the heart of an animal, which sparked widespread attention and heated discussion around the world.
At the forum, some advocated the protection of animal rights, some advocated respect for human rights, some firmly opposed it, and some firmly supported it. Whether the operation was successful or not, and what the child's life was like, all of this makes it difficult to judge whether it is right or wrong.
And if a human has a transplanted animal heart, is it still a human being?
On the evening of October 14, 1984, she was still suffering from fatigue and lying in bed weakly, before she could experience the joy of becoming a mother, a tragedy had befallen the family.
The doctor's words were like a thunderbolt from the blue, plunging the family into endless sadness. "Your child has hypoplastic left heart, an extremely rare condition in which babies usually only survive for a day or two, and not more than a few weeks. "
The doctor said. "We almost never have ever had experience with this disease, and we are not technically equipped to do so. "
Heaven seems to be playing a cruel joke, giving her the opportunity of motherly love but depriving her of happiness. She pleaded repeatedly, but received an equally harrowing answer, and the doctor shook his head gently again, helplessly.
Her daughter's illness was like a bolt from the blue, shattering all Teresa's hopes for the future. The child was still in the intensive care unit, and she sat alone in the hospital bed, the doctor's last words echoing in her ears: "All we can do is hope that God will give us a suitable heart in these few days." ”
Although the heart is one of the most important organs in the human body, finding a suitable heart donor can be difficult to navigate. However, Teresa did not give up, she overcame the post-birth illness and desperately tried to find opportunities to improve the survival rate of the child.
When the doctors at Loma Linda Hospital learned that the child was suffering from a rare form of "hypoplastic left heart syndrome", they immediately took action and went all out to find a matching donor.
Teresa prayed quietly outside the door, hoping for uplifting news. She gave her child a beautiful name, Stephanie Fay Pokeley, and she looked forward to seeing her daughter grow up.
However, after a long wait, she was disappointed again. The diagnosis at this hospital was the same as at the first hospital, and her child was trapped in a difficult problem that modern medicine could not solve for the time being.
The attending physician told Teresa: "It is almost impossible to find a heart donor in a short period of time, and even if we do, we have no successful baby heart transplant cases to refer to, so the chances of success are unpredictable." ”
Teresa returned home with Fiy, who had been sentenced to death by everyone. In the days after returning home, she took care of Fay wholeheartedly and never left. She believes it is God's last grace to her, and she cherishes every moment she spends with Fay.
Sometimes, however, she blames God for letting a newborn being depart. She wanted Fay to leave some traces in this world, and to commemorate this brief moment, she recorded this special day with a video camera, leaving her in memory even after losing her.
When she had almost lost hope in her daughter, she came from Loma Linda Medical Center, where someone who claimed to be an assistant to Dr. Leonard Bailey told her that they were researching a possible cure for Fay.
He said it could be that God heard her and that they were going to use the heart of a baboon to transplant little Fay.
When Teresa first heard of the other party's wishes, Teresa couldn't help but think of the other party as a group of crazy people, because only crazy ideas could give birth to such a bold plan. She had heard of an allogeneic transplant before, but she never imagined that it would actually happen to her, let alone that her daughter might be one of the subjects of the program.
However, after only a few days of deliberation and looking at her daughter's petite face as she slept, Teresa finally chose to accept the plan. For any mother, it is instinct to let her child live a little longer at all costs.
Even if the probability of success is only one in a thousand, she is willing to play a "madman" for the sake of her daughter.
By addressing her doubts, Leonard Bailey presents her with an exciting prospect: in her time, Western society is enthusiastically exploring the possibility of "xenotransplantation".
Since 1954, American physician Joseph Murray successfully performed the first living donor transplant of human organs, transplanting the kidneys of identical twin brothers to patients, and the patient's life has been extended for 8 years.
This piqued the interest of Leonard, who graduated from Loma Linda Medical School in 1969 with a bachelor's degree. With his exceptional expertise, he made a positive contribution to the future of the field by his internship in the Department of Cardiac Surgery at the Children's Hospital of the Faculty of Medicine in Toronto.