Ailing Athlete Gets Donor’s Heart : Surgery: A teen-ager from Thousand Oaks is recovering from transplant surgery in Salt Lake City.

A 17-year-old Thousand Oaks athlete whose failing heart was replaced over the weekend was recovering Monday in a hospital in Utah.

Barely able to raise his voice above a whisper, Aaron Jones said he felt physically miserable but grateful as he lay in the University of Utah Medical Center in Salt Lake City.

In a telephone interview, he said he was glad to be alive although he was sick and weakened by medication to keep his body from rejecting the new heart.

“I didn’t have any thoughts on dying,” Jones said. “I knew I was going to live.”

Jones received a new heart Saturday from a 19-year-old Seattle youth who had died of head injuries.

As a runner and wrestler on the Thousand Oaks High School junior varsity team, Jones had lifted weights two or three hours a day and had run regularly.

Late last year he began to weaken and complained of cold symptoms.

“We just thought he had a mild case of the flu,” his mother, Shirley Jones, said. “The week after Christmas he didn’t feel real good, so he didn’t go to wrestling practice for a week. He felt tired, but he didn’t feel sick.”

Doctors found that he had a virus that weakens the heart. His family moved with him to the Salt Lake City area for treatment.

He declined with frightening speed, losing the sight in his left eye, his mother said. Doctors found that his heart was twice as big as it should have been, she said. He lost 24 pounds from his wrestling weight of 154 pounds. He became depressed.

“Inside he was fighting anger, because all of a sudden it looked like his future was being jerked out from under him,” she said.

Drugs didn’t cure him. His health deteriorated steadily.

On March 16 doctors moved him up the priority list of heart-transplant candidates.

On Saturday, as Aaron’s father watched from a hillside behind the medical center, a helicopter landed carrying a donor heart.

Gordon Jones said he ran to the medical workers unloading the organ and asked if it was for his son. They said it was.

“I was excited,” Jones said. “I wanted to run in and tell my wife that it was there because I knew it was my son’s heart.”

Doctors will continue to monitor Aaron’s condition for six more months to determine if his body is accepting the new heart, and he will have to return for treatment every four months, his mother said.

About 80% of heart recipients survive the first year, 73% survive for 10 years or longer, according to the American Council on Transplantation.

Because of the high cost of heart transplants, a medical trust fund has been set up for Aaron, said Joel Bryan, a family friend and Aaron’s seminary teacher at the Church of Latter-day Saints in Thousand Oaks.

“He’s a sick little guy, but he’s doing well right now,” his mother said. “He wants to return to wrestling. He’s talking about maybe running again.”

Jones said he plans to return to sports but realizes there is more to life than wrestling.

“If someone hadn’t died and hadn’t donated this heart, I’d still be waiting for one,” he said. “It’s a great gift.”