Joe McNutt Heart Transplant Recipient

Joe McNutt's story first appeared in the LifeShare newsletter, Volume 10, No. 2, October 2002.

As the dye raced through his blood vessels to his heart, Joe McNutt heard the alarmed doctor issue orders to stop the test. “Your heart is gone, Joe,” the doctor told him later. “You need a transplant.” The words echoed in his head.

They were words Joe McNutt never expected to hear. But, that’s what the doctor was telling him. Joe was a health nut. “I was jogging five days a week. I didn’t smoke. I was in great shape. I refereed football and umpired baseball for 19 years.” But it was true. His heart was failing.

On October 3, 1993, Joe was in his back yard spraying for bugs. It was a nice day and he felt good. But when he went inside to wash his hands he felt a pain in his chest, then his jaw began to hurt, then his wrist. As the pain intensified, he told his wife, Judy, that he was going to the hospital. The doctors told Joe he had had a heart attack. It was after a second heart attack on Sept. 14, 1994, that Joe was hospitalized and put on the heart transplant waiting list. “They wouldn’t let me out of bed,” Joe says. “They wouldn’t let me stand up. They wouldn’t let me do anything.”

Nineteen-year-old Kasey McNutt says she and her mom and sister, Jolie, were afraid that Joe might not be able to survive the wait for a new heart. Then Kasey said, “He’s got to live because he promised to walk me down the aisle when I get married.” When Judy told Joe what Kasey had said, it upset him. “I’m going to make you a promise,” he told Kasey, “You have nothing to worry about. I’ll be there to walk you down the aisle.” 

When David Mahon finished his work shift at Café Roma in Caesar’s Palace, he joined friends at a place on Mt. Charleston, near Las Vegas. They would often gather there to eat and drink and share conversation. David wasn’t a drinker, so he would sip hot chocolate while he and his friends talked. He left alone that night, and as he made his way down the often windy mountain road, he apparently lost control of his car which appeared to have hit the median and rolled several times. His mother, Barbara Ayala, was told to come to the hospital, David was severely injured.

Eleven agonizing days passed before David’s family was told that he would not survive; that he was brain dead.

“God gave me those eleven days to prepare,” remembers Barbara.

When one of the nurses approached Barbara about the possibility of organ and tissue donation, Barbara said she and David had not talked about it. But David’s best friend, Bobby Lee, said they had talked about it and it was something David said he wanted to do.

“I said yes,” Barbara recalls, “because I liked the idea that David would be living on in other people.” 

On Nov. 12, Joe was told his ejection fraction was about 16 percent, and when he stood it dropped to 9 percent. A normal ejection fraction, the percentage of the blood squeezed out of the heart’s pumping chamber with each heartbeat, is 60 to 80 percent. Joe was now number one on the heart transplant waiting list at INTEGRIS Baptist Medical Center.

As they waited, Joe’s daughter, Jolie, brought his four-year-old granddaughter, Jerzee, into his room. She crawled up on the bed and she and Joe colored and played and talked. As the family was leaving for the night, Joe says he asked Jerzee to pray. “I told her God listens to children and that I would get a heart if she would pray for me.” Jerzee got on her knees and put her hands together. “God bless Mama, Daddy, Mama Judy, the dog and the cat. God bless Aunt Kasey. God bless that Papa Joe gets a heart and God bless the doctors that put it in. Amen.” The family left at 10:20 p.m.

At 10:30, a nurse came in and said they had a heart. But the heart was small. Although Joe was number one on the list, he was 6 feet tall and weighed 200 pounds. It would fit another man who was waiting much better, they told him, but it was his decision.

“Can I have a few minutes to think about this and to pray?” asked Joe.
“Yes, but hurry,” replied the nurse, “we have to prep one of you for surgery.”
When the nurse came back, Joe told her to give the heart to the other man.
“I had prayed and decided to give it to him,” Joe remembered. “At first I thought, ‘Good gosh, what have I done?’ It was a hard decision. I wanted to live for my family.”

The nurse left to prepare the other patient for his heart transplant. Joe, crying softly, just continued to pray. Ten minutes later, the same nurse came into Joe’s room and excitedly told Joe they had another heart. “This one’s for you, Joe. This one fits you.”

“When you pray,” says Joe, “pray with the faith of a four-year-old. When you get older, you have doubts when you pray. But, when you’re four years old, you pray and believe it. That’s what Jerzee did, and that’s why I got my heart.”

On May 17, 2001, Kasey McNutt married Jean-Ian Filiatrault, who was then a player with the Oklahoma City Blazers hockey team, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Joe McNutt was there to give his daughter away as Barbara Ayala, mother of David Keith Mahon, Joe’s heart donor, looked on.

Joe kissed Kasey and started to back away, but Kasey grabbed him and pulled him close. She said, “Dad, thanks for keeping your promise and never giving up on me.” Then, Kasey looked at Barbara Ayala and said, “Thank you that your son could make it possible for my dad to be here today.”

“I got to keep the promise,” says Joe.

And Kasey says her dad has made another promise. “He promised he would be here to help me raise my kids.”