For transplant pioneer, a bounty of family life

This November 2005 photo released by Massachusetts General Hospital shows John A. Scripter (left) and Dr. G. William Dec marking the 20th anniversary of Scripter's heart transplant. (Associated Press)

John A. Scripter's heart was failing. Without a transplant, he had six months left to live, doctors at the Massachusetts General Hospital warned. With a transplant, he had a chance to live five years.

How many heart transplant surgeries had the doctors at the hospital performed, Scripter, a 45-year-old manual laborer from Greenville, N.H., asked cardiac surgeon G. William Dec.

"I said: 'None. You'll be our first one,' " Dec recalled telling Scripter at the time. "He said, 'If you guys know what you're doing, sign me up.' "

Scripter underwent the novel surgery, hoping the transplant would give him five more years with his wife, Linda, five years to watch his nine children become adults, to see his grandchildren.

He got 22.

Scripter, who in 1985 was Massachusetts General Hospital's first heart transplant patient, died last Friday. He outlived most heart transplant recipients by a decade. He lived to see 19 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. He was 67.

"After five years, every day . . . was a bonus," Linda Scripter, his wife of 46 years, said yesterday. "It was a day that he might not have had. We lived every day like it was the last."

Scripter had his first heart attack when he was 30. He underwent cardiac surgery in 1975 and 1984 to install coronary artery bypass grafts and repair a damaged heart valve.

Scripter was one of the first heart transplant patients in New England. The surgery became available after the Food and Drug Administration approved cyclosporine, a drug that prevents the rejection of donated organs, in 1983. The first such surgery in the region was performed at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in 1984, 17 years after South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard performed the first successful human heart transplant surgery in 1967.

"It was still scary because it was a whole new avenue," said Linda Scripter. "And he got a second chance. He was so fortunate."

After the transplant surgery Scripter "took care of the house for me, he kind of adopted the house," said Linda Scripter, who works at a company that makes igniters for oil and gas burners in Milford, N.H. He cooked chili and meatloaf, cleaned the house, and babysat the grandchildren. Gradually, he fell in love with electric train models.

"He got trains running, oh, everywhere," Linda Scripter said. "He's got little model villages set up, he built this huge train track in our living room. He just loved his trains." He had 22 trains, one for every year of his post-transplant life.

"We had our good times, we had our bad times," Scripter said. "He and I had talked about this, too, and he says: 'You know, I've had it all. It's wonderful, I've seen everything, I've seen my kids grow up, I've seen their kids.' "

Life for a transplant patient was not easy. Scripter, who used to work at a company manufacturing industrial molds in Milford, never returned to work. He battled kidney infection caused by his heart medications, said Dec. He lost his right leg to infection in March.

But he never gave up, Linda Scripter said.

"He had such fun. When he lost his leg he would come home . . . and he would scoot up the stairs on his butt," she said.

"It was indicative of the kind of drive that he's had," said Dec. "He said, 'Look, fit me for an artificial leg and I'll get going.' "

On average, heart transplant patients live 11 years after receiving the organ, said Gregory S. Couper, the surgical director of the heart transplant program at Brigham and Women's, which has performed about 550 such surgeries. Massachusetts General Hospital has performed 306, including Scripter's.

Up to 15 percent of patients die within the first year of complications related to surgery, such as infections and acute rejections, Couper said. Approximately four percent of patients die each of the following years, mostly of an arterial disease that surgeons consider a manifestation of chronic rejection of the transplant.

"The fact that this gentleman lived 22 years [after the surgery] is well beyond average," said Couper.

The cause of Scripter's death was unclear, said Dec, who continued to observe him after the surgery and who last saw him in November.

"He was his usual positive self" during that visit, Dec said. "He was looking forward to the holidays. It was obviously a surprise for all of us that he passed away so suddenly."

Scripter died Friday evening, after spending an afternoon with his oldest son, John Jr., who is 45. He had shown no signs of pain earlier that day, Linda Scripter said. She was at work when John Jr. called her with the news.

"When I left for work he was laughing and joking, they were watching a movie, it was a comedy," she said. "And then he just went and laid down on the bed, and that was it."

"I personally think he was just tired," said Scripter. "He's been through so much."