Foster Eagerly Awaits Heart Transplant

By Adam Wynn | Published in the Barrow County News

Most people have the luxury of going through their day without putting much concern in the function of their heart. Until roughly three weeks ago, Barrow County resident Lynn Foster was one of those people.

On the afternoon of Jan. 16, however, Lynn found herself headed to the emergency room for congestive heart failure.

“Three weeks ago, she was perfectly normal. Healthy,” Lynn Foster’s husband, Stephen, said. “Then one Friday afternoon she walked to the mailbox and was short of breath. I told her she shouldn’t be short of breath just for walking that far.”

Lynn called her doctor upon feeling a distinct shortness of breath, who insisted that she immediately get to the hospital. It was there that Lynn received the devastating news that she would need a heart transplant in order to survive.

“And the sooner the better,” Stephen said, quoting the doctors who worked on his wife at Emory.

“I haven’t processed it yet,” Lynn admitted. “I haven’t had time.”

At the start of the new year, Lynn was a normal working woman who taught special needs students at Winder-Barrow High School. She could walk all around the school, pushing students in wheelchairs and helping those who were in need.

Now, she is strapped to a portable cooler with a 48-hour medicine drip that is perhaps the main thing keeping her alive.

For this family, life has changed irreparably in a matter of days. “It’s been a lot to take in,” Stephen said. “Wow.”

The Fosters have been extremely busy in the last few weeks trying to get everything set up, from home health care to various appointments with her transplant team.

Lynn goes back to Emory next week, in fact, to have even more blood drawn and have more tests done to make sure that the heart she receives is the right one for her.

A heart transplant is obviously a complicated procedure, requiring some of the brightest medical minds in the country and severe preparation and precise timing.

For instance, the Fosters have to stay home most all the time because they need to leave their house within 30 minutes of receiving the call that a heart is available if they are to be in surgery within a transplanted heart’s viability window. Even something as minor as traffic could be a problem.

By their front door, the Fosters have three go bags waiting for the moment that call could come in.

“We just pray that there’s no traffic,” Stephen said.

The greatest complication when it comes to a heart transplant, though, is the reality that Lynn’s life-saving gift will come at great cost to someone else.

“That was one of the things that I struggled the most with. It’s hard for me to sit here and pray that someone will die so that my wife can live,” Stephen confessed. “It’s something that crosses your mind.”

“We’re both organ donors, we signed the papers 20 years ago, but we never really thought about it,” Lynn added.

But that is the reality that the Fosters face right now. Without someone else’s gift, Lynn Foster will not survive.

“There’s nothing to think about. This is what has to be done,” Lynn blankly said.

While the Fosters have no timeline at present for when they could receive a new heart, the medicine is enough to work for now until a donor can be procured.

“The only other option we have is if her heart gets weaker...they have a VAD, a ventricular assist device they will implant, that will help her heart beat more regularly until we find a donor,” Stephen informed. “Hopefully we can find a donor before that, but part of the deal is that you have to pay for part of the transplant. I don’t know why. Its just part of the deal.”

Lynn is a cherished member of the Barrow community, having worked with special needs students at Winder-Barrow for so long and having been an active member of Calvary Baptist Church on the outskirts of Statham.

As difficult as this time has been, the Fosters are starting to realize just how loved they are with the outpouring of love and support from friends and neighbors and complete strangers.

A GoFundMe page was started to help the Fosters raise the money they will need in the upcoming days, with more than $6,500 having been raised in the first five days alone.

A large portion of that money has come from two separate $2,000 donations, but more than 30 groups and individuals have so far stepped in to contribute, many of them being fellow members of the Winder-Barrow High School community.

The GG Coffee Club raised more than $500 in a spontaneous charity event to sponsor the Fosters, while several teachers and coaches have sought to give what they can.

“How did y’all do this?” Lynn said, astonished at how her students and others were able to raise so much money.

One of Lynn’s students at Winder-Barrow works at Zaxby’s and has asked to host a fundraiser night in her teacher’s honor.

“We’ve had some great people donate, but we need a lot more,” Stephen said.

The current total is just a portion of the $50,000 goal that the Fosters have established, an amount that is still likely not enough to cover all the medical and incidental expenses coming their way.

The Fosters are also setting up an account at Regions Bank for donations with the possibility of a benefit singing at Eastside Baptist in Winder, just one of the many churches that has offered to help.

“It just reminds us that there are still good people in the world,” Stephen acknowledged.

Lynn, a voracious reader who particularly loves mystery novels and crime thrillers, but not the harlequin romances, hopes that her life will be back to some semblance of normal before long. She has had precious little time to read lately, but that is likely going to change.

“I think I’ll be picking up my old pass-time soon, because it’s going to be real boring for a while,” Lynn figured. “I usually make my guess midway through and keep reading to see if I was right.”

In Lynn’s case, boring means she carries around a cooler full of medicine that she affectionately refers to as her buddy while waiting for a new heart.

Although doctors are fairly certain that it was a virus that attacked Lynn’s heart and created this present predicament, they will probably never know for sure why this is happening to her.

According to the Fosters, though, why it is happening is not nearly as important as how they respond. And their response is encouraging people to help others.

“Please consider becoming an organ donor,” Stephen said. “You never know whose life you’re going to save.”

“It doesn’t seem fair that another family is going to have to give up something,” Lynn added, “but that’s the part that I haven’t really processed yet. I guess in the three months after the transplant, I’ll really stop and think about it.”