Calvin (Burl) Creel - (Gary Lawhon comments) (Part One)

Florida's Capital Newspaper Transplant team runs race for life of ailing patient By Linda Duffy Democrat staff writer The time is 10:20 p.m. Tuesday. The place is an operating room in an upper-Midwestern city. Dr. Thomas J. Bixler has just gotten the go-ahead to remove the heart from a brain-dead donor. r I Bixler As other teams remove the liver and kidneys, Bixler puts the heart to sleep by infusing the brick-colored muscle with a clear solution called cardioplegia, which he has brought from Tallahassee. Then, slice, slice, slice, slice and Bixler has severed the four vessels that hold the organ in place. The swift strokes, done with an artist's combination of deftness and delicacy, take less than one minute. The 38-year-old surgeon bathes the now-flaccid muscle in a slushy electrolyte solution, triple-bags it in plastic and gently places it in an Igloo cooler the kind most folks use to carry their ham sandwiches and soft drinks. In the language of transplants, Bixler has just "harvested" a heart, his 10th. It is bound for Burl Creel, a 47-year-old former pipe-fitter who lies near death in Tallahassee. Since the heart can last only four hours outside a body, and since Creel is so desperately ill, the race for life is on. This is the story of that race, a race Creel is winning. The patient Calvin "Burl" Creel is a slight man who, his friends say, looks older than his years. Two open-heart operations, gray-white hair and near-constant pain have aged him. This once-active man loves his hunting and fishing. He has six children, the oldest one 25, the youngest one 12. Before his bum heart put an end to working and smoking, he was a pipe-fitter. "He had his first heart attack when he was 37," said his longtime hunting and fishing chum, Gary Lawhon. "But it wasn't from bad See HEART, 12a

Tallahassee Democrat

Calvin (Burl) Creel - (Gary Lawhon comments) (Part One)

Calvin (Burl) Creel - (Gary Lawhon comments) (Part One)

Tallahassee Democrat