Progress, Then a Setback

Louis Washkansky began the second week of his second life by eating steak and eggs, his favorite dish. He took his first hesitant steps, a few yards from his bed to an armchair on a sunny balcony, badgered his wife to bring the family for a visit, and nicknamed the daily blood sampler "Old Dracula." Every other day he got a dose of cobalt-60 radiation that his doctors had or dered in hopes of controlling the expected--indeed, inevitable--attempt by his system to reject the "foreign" heart muscle in his chest. Even so, he was doing so famously in the early part of the week that he hoped to go home for Christmas--though doctors were reluctant to expose him to a crush of well-wishers.

Then came a disturbing report. One afternoon Washkansky complained of chest pains and started running a slight fever. By morning he was coughing up sputum. Doctors diagnosed it as pneumonia, in the next 24 hours gave him 20 million units of penicillin.

Chief Surgeon Christiaan N. Barnard, who earlier in the week accepted an honorary D.Sc. from Cape Town University and offhandedly reported that his arthritic hands had not bothered him at all during the five-hour operation, quickly assembled his team at Washkansky's bedside. Whether a heart-transplant patient who had diabetes and was on immunosuppressive drugs could fight off pneumonia was difficult to say. Yet at week's end the hospital still listed Washkansky's condition as "satisfactory." Said Surgeon Barnard: "It's worrying, of course. But I think we can get this infection under control."

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