MKCC 2024

Title: In Search of a Heart
Date: 18-Apr-2014

On The Road Again

SHELTER COMMUNITY CHRONICLES

In Search of a Heart

Sivaraman Krishnan, 32 is the recipient of a mechanical heart under the National Heart Institute (IJN) Mechanical Heart Programme on 21 September 2011. This father of four, underwent an implant operation at IJN on 28 March 2011 and awaits a heart to facilitate a transplant. 

“When I was sick at that time, to climb up a storey was not possible. Now I am able to go up the 16-storey flats. “I am grateful to the doctors who have given me a better life.”He is the first patient in the country to have gone for an implant and wears two pouches around his waist for the battery and controller which displays the pump parameters.

 

Constraints

Shelter’s Community Officer interviewed the family in December 2013 under its Community Food Aid Programme and discovered that the family is beset with financial and work constraints. Sivaraman’s wife works in a fastfood restaurant and her income is insufficient to meet the monthly household expenses.

Sivaraman has to take seven types of medication for his non-ischaemic Dilated Cardiomyopathy (end stage heart failure and pulmonary hypertension), and continues to receive treatment from IJN and the Cardiology department. Shelter seeks your help for this family to overcome these constraints.

Here is how you can assist them: sponsor the educational needs, fees and bus fares for Sivaraman’s children. Danish Raj, 11 studies at Sekolah Kebangsan Seri Perak, while Ruban Raj, 9 is in Sekolah Kebangsan Tamil, Sentul, KL. He has two other children: Sharmili, 8 and Sugan Raj, 6 in pre-school.

 

NEWSDESK

 

 Life Support Device: Heartware VAD centrifugal pump 

 

“When I was sick at that time, to climb up a storey was not possible. Now I am able to go up the 16-storey flats.” 

 

 

 

 

Heartwave Charger:  A third generationventricular device 

 

Currently IJN has seven patients on its Organ Transplant waiting list for heart and lung, and Sivaraman is at the top of that list. He has endeavoured to work as a security officer but had his job terminated. This has not dampened his spirits and he is zealous to look for opportunities to start a small business.
 

To wait for a heart is like to wait for the moment of truth.  At Shelter we believe every time you do a good deed you shine the light a little farther into the dark. And the thing is, when you're gone that light is going to keep shining on, pushing the shadows back. Call us.



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