Heart transplant recipient gets new lease on life

<p>A life &ndash; and baseball career - was saved, thanks to a heart transplant.</p>

News 12 Staff

Jul 5, 2018, 9:37 PM

Updated 2,132 days ago

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A life – and baseball career - was saved, thanks to a heart transplant.
Ken Frawley, 28, has been playing baseball almost his entire life, from Little League to White Plains High School to St. Thomas Aquinas College in Rockland County.
Frawley currently pitches in the Westchester Rockland Wood Bat League, throwing strikes for the Thunderdogs.
Four years ago, he suffered from an arrhythmia. He went on a defibrillator, but it lasted only a year and a half. He was then diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy and needed a new heart.
He was immediately put on an organ donor list.
"The issue we ran into is that New York is the worst state in the country for organ donations so I ended up going to Newark Beth Israel in New Jersey, and seven days later, I got my call they had a heart for me," says Frawley.
Frawley said he felt comfortable with the team of doctors at Beth Israel, knowing he was the 929th heart transplant at the hospital.
The operation took 5 1/2 hours, and he rebounded so quickly that he returned to the ballfield less than six weeks after the transplant.
Frawley says he hopes to one day reach out to the donor’s family and thank them for saving his life. He and his family also want to work with New York state to help improve the donor program.


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