Feeling Much Better, Thank You

By Claudia Wattis

But plastic heart recipient Barney Clark still faces problems

The patient was weak, exhausted, his face looking almost pained when it flashed onto the television screen, and his comments were haltingly slow. But it was not the mechanical heart that troubled Barney Clark as he gave his first public interview since his historic operation on Dec. 1. "The heart has pumped right along. It doesn't bother me at all," he told his surgeon, Dr. William DeVries, who conducted the session on videotape at the University of Utah Medical Center. Instead, it was his lungs, permanently damaged by years of poor circulation, that kept Clark rasping throughout the 2 1/2-minute conversation. The obvious strain on the former Seattle dentist raised one question, but Clark had no doubt about the answer: "It is worth it." He said he would advise other artificial-heart candidates to go ahead with the procedure, "if the alternative is they either die or have it done." He added, "All in all, it has been a pleasure to be able to help people."

Clark, however, was not always so sure that the pleasure he felt in making a contribution to medicine outweighed his pain. "There were times when he wanted to die," DeVries admitted to reporters. Questions about Clark's mental state were answered definitively for the first time last week by Dr. Claudia Berenson, a psychiatrist who served on the hospital panel that selected Clark as the first artificial-heart recipient and who has been following his case ever since.

Clark had suffered seizures one week after the heart was implanted and lapsed into what Berenson termed "acute brain syndrome," characterized by "delirium, decreased alertness, severe memory loss and confusion." The condition, she believed, was organic rather than emotional, perhaps brought on by the sudden increase in blood supply to a brain "that had become used to low cardiac output." When questioned, Clark would "look perplexed," Berenson said. "Sometimes he would not know he had had surgery or what it was for." Clark often appeared too discouraged to try to speak, but at times he was lucid enough to be painfully aware of his condition. "My mind is shot," he told Berenson more than once.

Then late last month there was a sudden turnaround. Returning from a brief business trip, Berenson met Clark's wife Una Loy in the hospital corridor and was told, "Barney is great. He is a totally different person." Berenson quickly confirmed this for herself. "He started talking to me like I was a psychiatrist. It was a 20-minute monologue." Now, she said, Clark is "lucid and rational. He wants to participate in his recovery."

Toward this end, Clark is eating a varied diet and gradually increasing his activity. His meals include bacon and eggs, potatoes and gravy, vegetables and lemon pie, quite a change since January, when he was forbidden to taste the heart-shaped chocolate cake that was baked for his 62nd birthday. Clark, who had been a 6-handicap golfer, avidly follows sports on TV and enjoys reading the letters that have arrived by the thousands. He was particularly pleased when a Seattle hospital named a coronary wing after him. "Just think," he said dryly, "I didn't have to die to get it."

Twice a day, Clark takes cautious steps with a walker and pumps a modified exercise bicycle. As he becomes more active, he should be able to cough more and thus clear his lungs. Still, he will probably always need to be near an oxygen supply. His longstanding kidney problems, on the other hand, have cleared up, and he is no longer bothered by nosebleeds.

Should he continue to make progress, Clark will be able to leave the hospital within "the next month or so," according to DeVries. He did suffer a pulmonary infection late last week, which doctors felt he would weather. Una Loy has already found two suitable houses within a mile of the hospital. In the meantime, the Utah team is eager to find a second candidate for the heart, preferably one who is not, as Clark was, near death when the operation begins. But no matter what his condition, Clark's successor will have a certain advantage. For as Clark said with satisfaction to DeVries last week, "You folks have learned something.''

-- By Claudia Wattis.

Reported by Joseph J. Kane/ Los Angeles

With reporting by Joseph J. Kane This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.