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Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Family needs support more than ever
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The weekend started out on a high note.
On Saturday, Chuck Peavy got to see his 2-year-old twins, Matthew and Megan. Then Julia, his 5-year-old daughter, and her grandmother paid a visit Sunday.
Father and daughter talked about the future, better days, after he got his new heart, left Emory University Hospital and got his life back. Back to their home in Snellville, to Cindi, his wife of 15 years, to the kids.
To living.
“His spirits were good,” Barbara Morales, a neighbor and family friend, told me. Then, Peavy took a turn for the worse, something that’s happened several times since his admittance to Emory in January.
Last month he “coded,” Cindi told me in May, and had to be shocked back to life. Once his blood pressure plummeted to 70/31. More recently, a staph infection developed in his cardiac catheter.
The Peavys hung tough, though, despite Chuck’s congestive heart failure, their money woes, the untenable stress. The couple talked about life after the heart transplant, not life without Chuck, 46.
“We’re pretty optimistic people,” Cindi, 43, had told me. “We have to be. We talk about ‘when you get a heart, when we get this.’ “
Obviously, Peavy, a service writer for Stone Mountain Ford, quit working. Cindi quit her job as a marketing manager to stay atop things. They needed help - with baby-sitting, meals and yes, money. I wrote about their plight in a May 25 column.
No surprise here, but this community responded splendidly. People wanted to baby-sit, donate, clean the house, pray. A kids’ bake sale raised $1,126.
“People were giving $20 for a cupcake,” said Barbara Myers, whose daughter, Allie, helped plan the neighborhood event. “Nobody asked for change.”
Offers of support continue to pour in. It’s still needed.
Patsy Reynolds, a friend of the Peavys’, sent me an e-mail and left a voice message on Friday with an idea that was to be today’s column topic.
“Chuck Peavy needs a heart today,” she wrote. “Why am I telling you this? To see if some information about being a donor could be gotten out to the public right away.”
Right now, there are 56 patients on the waiting list at Emory’s Center for Heart Failure Therapy and Transplantation. According to its Web site, the center performs about 20 heart transplants a year. More than 90 percent of its patients survive a year or more following surgery; about 60 percent live up to 10 years or longer.
But the single biggest limiting factor to transplants of any kind are organ donors - the lack of them, said Lance M. Skelly, a spokesman for Emory hospitals.
Julia and her grandmother had to be removed from Chuck’s room on Sunday. He became nauseous, then his weak heart stopped, said Morales, the family friend, and Cindi’s mom, Charlotte Daniel. Doctors were unable to revive him.
Cindi, who for the most part has been rock solid through this ordeal, finally broke down emotionally and mentally. Late Monday, with the help of Morales, she planned to tell Julia, maybe the twins, that Daddy won’t be coming back home.
At least not to the one here on Earth.
Donations to the Peavy Family Fund may only be made at Bank of America, 840 Oak Road, Lawrenceville. Rick Badie’s column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Contact him at 770-263-3875 or e-mail: rbadie@ ajc.com.
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