Schroeder Has Peek at Other ‘Club Member’

Seated in a wheelchair, William J. Schroeder peered through a glass door into the room where Murray P. Haydon lay in his hospital bed--the first time one artificial heart recipient had gazed on another.

“Bill, that’s another member of the club,” said Schroeder’s wife, Margaret, during the encounter.

Schroeder, who has lived 87 days with the steady clicking of an artificial heart inside his chest, waved and smiled at Haydon, who slept quietly the whole time, unaware of his guests.

When he first looked in at Haydon, Schroeder “did a double take looking at the Utahdrive system” that powers the heart, said Dr. Allan M. Lansing, chairman of Humana Heart Institute International.

Surprised at Sight

“That was the first time he’d ever been more than eight feet away from one” since he began his life tethered to the 323-pound device, Lansing said. “And he was a little shocked to see one sitting there in front of him.”

At a medical briefing today, doctors said an alert, confident Haydon was ready to sit up in bed, begin drinking fluids and start a mild exercise program on the third day of his new life with an artificial heart.

Meanwhile, they said, the outlook for Schroeder, the second recipient of a permanent artificial heart, had brightened considerably overnight and doctors were hoping within a week to take him for his first trip outside the hospital.

Schroeder “is returning toward where he was three weeks ago,” when he was nearly ready to be released from the hospital, Lansing said.

Just at that time Schroeder was hit with an unexplained fever that quickly reversed his recovery. The fever has diminished, but Schroeder “is not free of fever completely,” Lansing said.