Teen awaits heart transplant

Justin Cornish colors this mural to help keep negative thoughts at bay.

A new heart is the only thing that will save Justin Cornish’s life.

“But I know someone else has to die and that bothers me,” said Cornish, who is diagnosed with cardiomyopathy.

The 16-year-old from Lincoln is a patient in the Clarkson Tower Cardiac Progressive Care unit and the fourth member of his family afflicted with Daner’s disease, a rare form of muscular dystrophy that strikes the heart muscle.

Cornish’s two older brothers both died from cardiomyopathy as a result of Daner’s disease and his mother Vickie Cornish was diagnosed five years ago with it.

“It’s devastating,” she told reporters on Tuesday. “Justin has been so strong through all of this. He was evaluated for a heart transplant on Nov. 15 and by last week he had lost 15 percent of his heart function.”

The Cornishes met with reporters in hopes of not only improving the teen’s chance of receiving a heart transplant, but to raise awareness about the need for more organ donations.

“I feel like I’ve been on both sides of the fence,” Vickie Cornish said. “I want my son to get an organ, but I also know what it is like to lose a loved one.”

Justin Cornish, left, and Mohammed Quader, M.D.

Cornish has less than a month to live, his doctors say, and is at the top of the heart transplant list. Said Mohammed Quader, M.D., transplant surgeon and assistant professor in the department of surgery at UNMC: “I will do everything in my power to help Justin.”

It is important to identify a person’s need for an organ transplant early to increase the likelihood that the transplant will be successful, Dr. Quader said. Unfortunately for Cornish’s brothers, Richard and Everett, the need for a transplant wasn’t recognized in time. Richard died in 2001 and Everett died last December. Cornish also has two other siblings who appear unaffected by the disease.

Cornish said he was close to his brother Richard and vowed that if he does receive a new heart he will live a good life in memory of him. “My goal is to finish high school, go to college and become a heart doctor,” he said.

The Nebraska Medical Center is one of only two hospitals in the state where heart transplants are performed. Bryan LGH in Lincoln is the other.

The Nebraska Medical Center reintroduced its heart transplant program on Sept. 29 after a six-year hiatus when Mark Maeder of Papillion received a heart. Since then two more heart transplants have been performed, Dr. Quader said.

“Usually a heart transplant center will perform between six to 12 transplants each year,” he said, noting that about 2,200 heart transplants are done per year in the United States.