2 Uninsured Heart Patients Need $80,000 to Get on Transplant List

Stephen Regalado of Mission Viejo lies in a hospital bed in intensive care at UCI Medical Center in Orange, his body deteriorating from the effects of a persistent virus that began attacking his heart nine months ago. He is 23, and he wants a chance to live.

In another hospital wing, Hector Bojado, 29, of Anaheim, is suffering from the same heart disease--cardiomyopathy--an irreversible swelling of the heart that has left him, like Regalado, near death.

Yet without medical insurance, they cannot be put on a heart transplant list by the medical center unless each raises $80,000 to help pay for his operation.

“Money should not be a reason to die, and a hospital should not be responsible or it will be even more broke than it is,” said Dr. Richard Ott, UCI Medical Center’s director of cardiac transplantation.

Escalating medical costs have prohibited such hospitals as the medical center from underwriting heart transplants and other major operations, said Elaine Beno, a medical center spokeswoman.

Even when the patient has insurance, some carriers do not pay for transplant operations because they are considered “selective” rather than conventional surgeries, she said.

The first hurdle is money, Ott said. The second hurdle is getting both patients on a priority transplant list with the Regional Organ Procurement Agency based at UCLA, he said. Regalado and Bojado would be ranked on the list based on critical need, blood type and other factors.

Potential heart donors must have compatible blood and tissue or the recipient’s body most likely will reject the new heart, said Ott, who has performed seven transplants since April, 1988.

Fund-raising projects for both patients have been scheduled by the medical center’s auxiliary organization, a fund-raising arm that helps indigent patients, said Jim Curran, a UCI Auxiliary spokesman.

“We thought we had a few months to help raise money for them, say by December,” Curran said. “On Friday, though, we got a call from Dr. Ott who told us, ‘Our backs are against the wall.’

“We need to raise the money before time runs out.”

Regalado, who is 5-foot-5, now weighs only 90 pounds. He suffers from a sporadic and random disease that strikes only one to two people per 100,000.

On Friday, Regalado’s conditioned worsened, and he was put in the medical center’s intensive cardiac care ward, where he remained stabilized.

“The reality is he’ll stay there, well, until he. . . .” Ott said, his voice trailing off.

Regalado’s blood pressure has weakened, even with medication to stimulate his heart. With the heart disabled and unable to pump enough replenishing oxygen to the body, other vital organs have weakened.

Regalado’s father, Albert, has been employed as an engineer at Unisys Corp. in Mission Viejo for 27 years. His medical insurance would have covered his son past the age of 19 if he were in college. But his son turned 23 on Sept. 13 and was working at a factory manufacturing computer cables.

Only last November, his son was fine. Then the virus struck, his father said.

“We thought it was the flu,” the elder Regalado said. When his son got worse, they took him to Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center, “but they couldn’t find out what was wrong with him until they called in a heart specialist,” Regalado’s father said.

During a brief bedside interview, Regalado, a 1985 graduate of Mission Viejo High School, said he has always led an active life.

Now he lies practically motionless on a hospital bed connected by wires to a series of monitors checking his heartbeat, blood pressure and oxygen level.

Speaking was difficult, and he managed only a few sentences of small talk about his strict diet of hospital food.

Bojado, who seemed in better shape than Regalado, has had his good and bad days.

“I feel OK, but my blood doesn’t circulate good in my legs, and I get tired pretty easy,” Bojado said.

Unlike Regalado, Bojado--born in Colima, Mexico--has no nearby family.

“I called up my mother in Colima and told her the doctors said I would be getting a heart transplant. She cried. But I comforted her and told her that the science and technology in this country was No. 1,” he said.

Bojado, who works as a plastics molder, has been in the United States nine years and is a divorced father of three.

“But I have not spoken to my daughters in some years. They live with their mother somewhere in Minnesota,” he said.

He has adopted the medical center’s staff on his floor as his family. He praised them as “very first-class people.”

“Today, Hector is having a good day,” Ott said. “But he is on a sort of downward spiral. He has been released, but we’ve had to bring him back in. He’s reached the point where he can’t take care of himself anymore. In reality, he’s an eyelash away from Regalado’s condition.”

Those interested in making contributions can make checks payable to UCI Medical Center Auxiliary, in care of Fund for Life, 101 City Drive, Route 100, Orange, 92668. For more information, contact the auxiliary at (714) 634-5541.