Since my heart attack and operation in June, I have become acutely aware of all things heart-shaped – both the one on Valentine’s cards and the one in our chests
Vassilios Avlonitis sits in a cramped basement office in St Thomas’ hospital in London. He may be a distinguished cardiac surgeon, but in the cash-strapped NHS, he still has to share a tiny workspace. He is immaculately turned out, with a kind face and the sort of hands I imagine playing the piano. And it’s his hands that I can’t stop looking at. The same hands that picked up a radial saw and cut through my breastbone. The same hands – the only hands – that have literally touched my heart. The hands that stripped veins from my leg and used them to replumb my broken heart. I have this man to thank for saving my life. And the cash-strapped NHS, of course.
It is 50 years since Christiaan Barnard performed the first successful heart transplant operation. At the time, it was akin to putting a man on the moon. My operation was just a simple quadruple heart bypass, not a transplant. The day after the terrorist attack at Borough market, I had a heart attack. The team at St Thomas’ discovered that my heart was almost completely blocked up with gunk. And they fixed me. So now I am overly aware of all things heart-shaped – both the pointy red heart shape that gets tattooed on arms and printed on Valentine’s cards and the fist-sized muscly pump that propels blood around our bodies.
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