The Heart Not Only for Loving. (Heart and Lungs).(Brief Article)

Alex Chandler is a Chicago baseball fan. But until recently he never even had a chance to play on a Little League team.

Alex had cardiomyopathy, a disease that destroys the muscle of the heart. Doctors think Alex contracted the disease after a severe viral infection.

Alex's heart muscle got weaker and weaker, and couldn't deliver enough blood to all the parts of his body. He was always tired. He had pains in his chest and even fainted at times. Alex took many different medications to treat the symptoms, but there is no cure for the myopathy itself.

Finally, his doctors said only a heart transplant could save his life.

Easier said than done. There have been only a few hundred heart transplants performed on children. Even if the operation were successful, Alex's body would try to reject the new heart. It would see the heart as a foreign object and try to get rid of it. For the rest of Alex's life, he would have to take antirejection medicines. These make the immune system do a less efficient job of rejection. This may save the transplant, but it also would leave Alex vulnerable to other diseases.

Alex said he was willing to risk all that. Now the biggest problem was finding a heart that was healthy and that matched his blood type.

Alex was on a national tissue transplant waiting list for six months. Then a 16-year-old boy in Philadelphia was in a fatal car crash. His family agreed to donate his organs. Doctors in Philadelphia notified the tissue transplant clearinghouse.