NRAA keynote speaker talks about the value of patient-caregiver relationship
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HUNTINGTON BEACH, California — It did not take long for Bill Coon’s chances of survival in the world to come into question. “I had a heart attack seconds before I was born,” Coon, a professional speaker, author and heart and kidney transplant recipient, told attendees at the National Renal Administrators Association’s Annual Conference here. “In a matter of 12 hours, I was airlifted by helicopter and taken to a hospital in Chicago.”
There, Coon said he was placed on lift support while awaiting the availability of a pediatric heart. The organ arrived 20 days later — 1 day before his parents would had followed through on an agreement to discontinue life support. He became the eighth infant in the country to receive a heart transplant.
About 10 years later, the heart rejected, and Coon discovered a new challenge.
“The doctor came into the room and had this look on his face that I have never seen before,” Coon told the audience. “It was a look of terror and sorrow.” The physician told him in addition to the need for a new heart — required due to transplant vasculopathy — heavy use of anti-rejection medications had damaged his kidneys. “So, my doctor told me that, at age 20, I was not only in end-stage heart failure but also [had] end-stage renal disease.”
Coon eventually received both transplanted organs, but the dialysis experience was what made him the most “traumatized. It enacted all of the senses at once: the big machine, the smell of dialysis,” he said.
Key to his recovery he said, along with moving on in life, was the compassion of the hospital and dialysis staff.
“On a given day, a nurse could walk into five different hospital rooms, and they could be walking into five different worlds. In one room, they are a mom. In another room, they are an aunt. In another room, they are a fun sister; but all these relationships matter,” he said.
Coon runs Keep Swimming Foundation (www.keepswimmingfoundation.org), which provides financial relief to families of critically ill patients who require extended inpatient medical care. Donations go to routine expenses, Coon said, like covering hotel bills, food and gas for the car to get to the hospital. –by Mark E. Neumann
Reference:
Coon B. Above and beyond: Gratitude and education. Keynote speaker. Presented at: National Renal Administrators Association Annual Conference; Oct. 2-4, 2019; Huntington Beach, California.