A Lot Of Heart After A Transplant Saved Her Life, She’s Proving That Heart Patients Can Have Active Lives

Sally Sauer’s deathwatch ended the moment a nurse rushed to her hospital bed and shook her awake.

“Sally, we’ve got a heart for you,” the nurse announced.

With tearful family members and friends gathered outside the intensive care room, only moments earlier preparing to tell the upbeat, athletic waitress they loved goodbye, 26-year-old Sauer was wheeled into surgery for a transplant.

This Saturday, 4-1/2 years later, Sauer will climb Mount Spokane wearing a T-shirt saying, “I’m Living Proof: Transplants Work.” She’ll hike 4.1 miles, along with 30 other transplant patients, and as many as 1,500 other climbers.

The event, sponsored by The Heart Institute of Spokane, will raise money for the institute’s Heart-Kidney Research Project.

Sauer relishes the chance to prove how athletic transplant patients can be.

“Some people think we’re frail and we can walk a block and then we have to sit down and rest,” she said.

Instead, Sauer competes more intensely than ever. Last week she returned to her home in Libby, Mont., with a gold and a silver medal from the U.S. Transplant Games in Salt Lake City.

She won the gold in a 1500-meter race walk, and a silver in a 5-K run.

At 31, Sauer feels delighted to be alive.

“How could you not wake up happy?” she said, her hazel eyes beaming.

Her fitness routine, a bargain she made with her heart doctors, now saves her life.

Every other morning, she jogs half an hour, then heads to the Montana Athletic Club to lift weights for another 20 or 30 minutes. On alternate days, she rides her bike or climbs on the health club’s exercise bike.

“It keeps me healthy,” she said. “I feel good about myself and I don’t want to let my doctors down.”

On a recent day, after completing her routine, Sauer wore a T-shirt, black nylon shorts and running shoes. Her shoelaces read: “Share your decision about life.”

It’s a reference to the importance of telling family members your wishes about organ donation. During a crisis, most people don’t think to check a loved one’s driver’s license.

“Why not donate those organs so it gives somebody else a chance to live?” Sauer said.

Sauer, a former tomboy who loved climbing trees and playing baseball as a girl, was riding her mountain bike near St. Maries, Idaho, on April 25, 1991, when she and a friend got lost.

It was a rainy, windy day. Sauer and her friend had to swim across the river on their bikes, and Sauer emerged, freezing.

Later that evening, an exhausted Sauer began to feel ill.

At first she thought she had a bad cold. But after three weeks, Sauer was terribly sick, coughing and vomiting.

A doctor in Kellogg listened to her heart.

He pulled away with a pained expression.

Sauer’s heart was pounding frantically.

The doctor put his stethoscope to her ear. “It was like a bunch of horses galloping,” Sauer said.

It turned out that a virus had attacked her heart, destroying its right side. She was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy. She now had, doctors said, the heart of an 86-year-old woman.

Her memories of that time are sketchy.

There was the moment her heart surgeon told her she’d die without a transplant.

The moment the nurse appeared at her bedside with news of an anonymous donor.

There was also the moment she awoke, after a crisis following the transplant, to hear machines gurgling around her bed, like a scene out of a Frankenstein movie.

She endured endless medical procedures, including 25 biopsies to make certain her body wasn’t rejecting the heart.

She had a stroke one day in intensive care.

Another day her chest cavity filled with fluid and she had to be rushed into emergency surgery.

“It’s worth it,” she said. “If I had it to do again, I would. I didn’t want to die and I was determined not to.”

At the time of her illness, Sauer was married and working as a waitress in Kellogg and as a flagger for Washington Water Power.

Her husband divorced her as she prepared for the transplant. Afterward, Sauer took another job as a groundskeeper at a golf course.

Today, the side effects of the anti-rejection drugs prevent her from working.

She takes 12 medications twice a day to prevent rejection. Drugs alone cost $12,000 a year. Her need for Social Security benefits prohibits her from marrying.

Because of the medications she takes, she’ll never have children.

But life remains sweet.

“When I first had it, I looked at things like the sky, the trees, the flowers. Everything looked twice as beautiful to me,” Sauer said.

Sauer raises thyme, basil and sage for her favorite chili recipe. She hikes, camps and dances with her boyfriend. She often runs with her golden labrador, Goldie.

“She’s my baby,” Sauer says. “She’s like the child I’ll never have.”

And she trains for the next event.

After the Mount Spokane hike, there will be the NordicTrek 2-mile run in Libby, a benefit for the hospital, later this month. Sauer has also received an invitation to compete in the World Transplant Games in Sydney, Australia, in 1997.

That one may be too pricey, but Sauer definitely plans to continue to compete in this country.

She doesn’t worry about her life expectancy. Heart transplants have only been performed for the last 29 years. Originally, Sauer heard she might need another heart after five years.

But she knows of a transplant patient who has already lived 10 years.

“I never even think about that,” she said. “If I thought about that, I’d sit and worry about dying every day.”

Instead, Sauer exercises to stay alive.

Her workouts not only keep her new heart healthy, they also help reduce deterioration of her leg muscles, a side effect of the anti-rejection drugs.

She runs around the track on a late summer afternoon, her brown legs tan and strong, her wide smile breaking across her face like a sunrise.

“I think I’m more positive now than I ever have been,” Sauer said. “I’m just happy to be here.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color photos

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: HEARTY CLIMB The Climb Mount Spokane For Your Heart event will start at 8 a.m. Saturday. Hikers will raise pledges for heart and kidney research. The registration fee is $6 in advance, or $8 the day of the event. Call The Heart Institute of Spokane at 625-3000 to register.