I was given a young man's heart - and started craving beer and Kentucky Fried Chicken. My daughter said I even walked like a man
By CLAIRE SYLVIA
Last updated at 00:54am on 9th April 2008
Yesterday, the Mail told the extraordinary story of how a heart transplant recipient in America committed suicide - just like the man whose heart he had received 12 years previously. In another extraordinary twist, it emerged that the recipient had also married the donor's former wife.
So can elements of a person's character - or even their soul - be transplanted along with a heart?
One woman who believes this to be the case is CLAIRE SYLVIA, a divorced mother of one.
She was 47 and dying from a disease called primary pulmonary hypertension when, in 1988, she had a pioneering heartlung transplant in America.
She was given the organs of an 18-year-old boy who had been killed in a motorcycle accident near his home in Maine.
Claire, a former professional dancer, then made an astonishing discovery: she seemed to be acquiring the characteristics, and cravings, of the donor.
Here, in an extract from her book A Change Of Heart, Claire tells her remarkable story...
[...]
While I couldn't know their identity or give them my name, I knew my donor was an 18-year-old boy who had been killed in a motorcycle accident.
Because I was the first person in the state to have such an operation, there was a lot of publicity, and two reporters came to the hospital to interview me.
One asked: "Now that you've had this miracle, what do you want more than anything else?" "Actually," I replied, "I'm dying for a beer right now." I was mortified that I had given such a flippant answer, and also surprised.
I didn't even like beer. But the craving I felt was specifically for the taste of beer.
For some bizarre reason, I was convinced that nothing else in the world could quench my thirst.
That evening, an odd notion occurred to me: maybe the donor of my new organs, this young man from Maine, had been a beer drinker.
Was it possible that my new heart had reached me with its own set of tastes and preferences? It was a fascinating idea. During those early days, I had no idea that I would look back on this curious comment as the first of many mysteries after the transplant.
[...]
A month later, I left the hospital and moved into a medical halfway house a few miles away.
Now that I could eat like a normal person, I found, bizarrely, I'd developed a sudden fondness for certain foods I hadn't liked before: Snickers bars, green peppers, Kentucky Fried Chicken takeaway. As time went on, a strange question crept into my mind. Although I hadn't thought much about my donor, I was acutely aware that I was living with a man's heart - and I wondered whether it was conceivable that this male heart might affect me sexually.
cont'd...
