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IRELAND’S longest living heart transplant survivor said he wouldn’t be alive without the sacrifices of a grieving family. Andy Kavanagh underwent surgery in Dublin in 1986 when he was just 19 to give him a second chance at life. A year earlier, the Dubliner caught a flu illness that attacked the muscles of his heart, leading to a diagnosis of cardiomyopathy.

He was faced with undergoing a relatively new procedure in Ireland or face dying from the condition. In 2000, he got kidney cancer , and four years later needed a kidney transplant — so he told the Irish Sun he knows how “lucky” he is to receive two transplants. He said: “When I was told initially I genuinely thought it was a mistake, something was wrong.



You know you can hear of asking for a second opinion, I’m thinking that. "'This can’t be right, I’m 19 years of age, I can’t be needing a heart transplant. People are only old when they need heart surgery and things like that,'- that's the perception you are coming from as a young lad.

” Prior to the surgery he spent six months continuously in hospital except one weekend at home, where he picked up an infection. This meant he had to go back and wasn’t able to leave until the operation. Just a year later he underwent a heart transplant at the Mater Hospital.

At the time, only a handful of the surgeries had been carried out there, starting just the year before, and he was under the care of surgeons Maurice Nelligan and Freddie Wood. He received his h.

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