As Joe Johnson held his own heart in his hands, he felt deep respect and gratitude for how far the organ had brought him—including through two military tours, decades as a police officer and a stealthy illness that would eventually destroy his heart and require a transplant.

A mysterious rash in the late 1980s, when Joe was serving in the Navy, prompted a doctor to order tests that showed suspicious nodules in Joe’s lungs. The findings led to a stunning prediction: Joe would one day face organ dysfunction. But he was unflustered.

“I was 22 years old,” the Somerset County, New Jersey, man recalls. “It didn’t faze me. I felt invincible.”

Heart Failure Diagnosis

The doctor’s forecast came true 20 years later, when Joe—then a detective—caught bronchitis twice and developed pneumonia all in one winter. Concerned, his primary care doctor sent Joe for tests that resulted in a diagnosis of sarcoidosis—a rare disease marked by clusters of inflamed cells—in his lungs.

The condition was believed to have resulted from chemical exposures during Joe’s military stint. It didn’t stop there: The sarcoidosis crept into his heart muscle, causing his heart to pump far less efficiently.

Various medications worked to keep Joe’s heart failure under control for years. But that all changed—and so did his treatment trajectory, when cardiologist Jesus Almendral, M.D., now medical director of the Advanced Heart Failure Program at Jersey Shore University Medical Center, took the helm of Joe’s care.

Bridge to Heart Transplant 

Dr. Almendral met Joe when the father of six showed up in the emergency room one night after becoming so weak that he couldn’t walk from his car into his home. “My heart wasn’t pumping strongly enough to get blood to my brain,” Joe recalls. “My son had to carry me.”

Dr. Almendral laid out Joe’s treatment options, which were dwindling. They decided Joe would have a tiny heart pump implanted in his chest as a “bridge” to a heart transplant. Called a left ventricular assistive device, or LVAD, the pump would shore up Joe’s circulation until a donor heart became available.

“It’s not unusual to live for many years with heart failure when it’s managed well with medications,” Dr. Almendral says. “But even after getting an LVAD, we wanted to offer him a heart transplant as a long-term option.”

Dr. Almendral helped Joe prepare psychologically as well as physically for the moment in September 2017 when a donor heart matched his needs. “Morally, it was hard to digest, knowing someone has to die in order for me to live,” Joe says. “But Dr. Almendral helped me come to grips with it.”

Continuity of Care After Heart Transplant

With a new heart that “worked wonderfully right away,” Dr. Almendral says, Joe was only the second patient during the cardiologist’s decades-long career to request later to see the diseased organ that had been removed from his body. “It had grown with me from the womb, and I wanted to see what the doctors saw,” Joe says. “It was amazing. I am so thankful.”

Now 59, Joe has acted as a background extra on TV shows. He continues to take medication to prevent his body from rejecting his new heart. He also undergoes checkups every six months with Dr. Almendral and the Jersey Shore cardiology team through Jersey Shore’s Outpatient Advanced Heart Failure Program—the only program of its kind in New Jersey and one of four programs in the U.S. to have American College of Cardiology Outpatient Heart Failure Program accreditation.

“Joe’s heart function has remained normal ever since the transplant, and he can do everything he wants,” Dr. Almendral says. “I expect it to keep functioning well over the next decade and hopefully much longer.”

Next Steps & Resources

• Meet our Source: Jesus Almendral, M.D.
• To make an appointment with a cardiologist near year call 800-822-8905 or visit our website.
• Learn about cardiac care at Hackensack Meridian Health
• Schedule a heart screening near you

The material provided through HealthU is intended to be used as general information only and should not replace the advice of your physician. Always consult your physician for individual care.