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A Change of Heart [Case Histories gathered by William Novak]

 Of all the participants in our [transplant] group, I was closest to Joseph, a handsome musician in his early forties with curly red hair and a beard. After years of living with debilitating coronary disease, he finally received a new heart, and joined our original support group a few weeks later. Although Joseph wasn't much of a talker, his warmth and humor made him an instant favorite  …………

Joseph, too, had received the heart of a much younger man.  He played baseball, and after the transplant he injured his arm more than once because he now threw with such strength that his body couldn't handle it. Not surprisingly,  Joseph's dreams .... expressed the theme of a youthful heart trapped in an old body that couldn't keep up. 

In one dream, he was a young player, riding the bus to a game with his team mates.  But when the bus arrived and everybody ran to the field, Joseph was left behind; his body was so old and crippled that he had to crawl off the bus.

Later, in a striking series of three dreams, Joseph was able to visualize the successful integration of his new heart.  In the first dream he was in a wheelchair, unable to walk.  In the second, he was behind the wheelchair, pushing it along the road.  In the third and final dream, he folded up the wheelchair and put it away. A dream sequence rarely comes out so clearly, but what a wonderful feeling when it does.

Because Joseph's transplant was in late October, he was in the ICU over Halloween.  That night, Joseph dreamed that he begged to be let out of the hospital in order to go trick or treating.  It was, perhaps, an odd request for a man in his forties, but this was a dream where anything is possible.  The hospital authorities allowed him to go as long as he didn't stay out too late.

The next morning, the nurses were astonished at Joseph's output of urine, and one of them jokingly asked if he had been drinking beer all night.

"I must have peed about a gallon", he said. "It was as if this kid went out drinking,  and as a result I was peeing all morning."

As soon as he awoke that morning, Joseph wrote,  "He wants to come out. I could feel his force, holding my fists, running his course."

This was a common feeling among us - a claustrophobic sense of being held down while some living force within was desperately trying to escape.