Patient Misses Heart Transplant Because Of Weather Cancellations

Hundreds of thousands of people lost their holidays and their luggage over Christmas but a Fairbanks, Alaska, man potentially lost 20 or 30 years of Christmases. As the Anchorage Daily News reported, weather prevented Patrick Holland from keeping an appointment in Seattle to get a lifesaving heart transplant. Holland, 57, had three flights canceled as he tried to get to the hospital down south in time to accept the generosity of a 30-year-old man whose donor heart was a perfect match. After a day of scrambling for flights, the heart went to another recipient.

The call from the transplant clinic came as the worst ice storm to hit the Pacific Northwest in decades closed Sea-Tac Airport. When he got off the phone, Holland went straight to the airport and the first flight he tried to book was canceled. Alaska Airlines agents got him on a flight that was just about to close the doors but after four hours in the air, Holland ended up in Anchorage because of the storm. They tried one more time but when that flight was also canceled, the doctors in Seattle had to make the tough call. “I felt like my life was slipping away,” Holland said.

Holland has some time to get another heart. A cardiac disease that developed after he suffered a heart attack at the age of 29 has swollen his heart to twice its normal size and he was placed on the transplant list less than a month ago. Although he said the airlines did everything they could to get him to the appointment, he's taking that variable out of the equation. He's looking for a temporary place to live in Seattle, preferably near the hospital.