John Wayne Barnett of Belen: New Mexico’s First Heart Transplant Recipient (Part 1)

John Wayne Barnett had lived an active, relatively healthy existence for the first 40 years of his life. Married with four children, he enjoyed bass fishing, dancing and enchiladas.

John had only one bad habit, a weakness he later described as “plain stupid.” He smoked incessantly.

This is the story of how John’s smoking affected his heart so severely that he needed an entirely new, healthy heart if he hoped to survive.

Receiving a new heart in a complex operation performed on July 8, 1986, this humble resident of Belen became the first successful in-state heart transplant recipient in New Mexico history.

Early life

John Wayne Barnett was born in Hollis, Okla., on Dec. 12, 1942. His parents, Arthur and Wilma Barnett, had one other child, John’s older sister, Barbara.

John and his father were especially close. Tragically, Arthur died in 1952 when he was only 37. He was buried on John’s 10th birthday.

A few years later, John’s mother ran a café, where John met Nancy Louise Weldon, an attractive teenage girl who worked at Wilma’s restaurant. John asked Nancy out on a date, some say on a dare. They continued to date, although Nancy’s strict father reported them to the police if they stayed out after Nancy’s curfew. If they were late, the police would find them and escort them home, with police car lights flashing all the way.

Too young to marry in Oklahoma, John and Nancy eloped to Wellington, Texas, on Oct. 12, 1961, with John’s sister, Barbara, serving as their guardian and witness. Nancy’s father refused to talk to them for years.

The Barnetts had four daughters, Judith, Debbie, Jan and Lori.

In search of good, steady employment, John and Nancy moved frequently. Living in Arizona, Oklahoma and several parts of Texas, John worked as a construction worker, a pipefitter in the oil fields and the owner and operator of a service station in Duke, Okla.

Meanwhile, John’s mother, Wilma, had married James W. Holloman. The couple owned and operated ABC Cleaners in Albuquerque and the Country Cleaners in Bosque Farms. They lived in Bosque Farms.

Three packs a day

All went well for John and Nancy until 1982 when John suffered a heart attack, requiring a quadruple bypass operation in Amarillo, Texas.

Given the severity of his illness, John could no longer perform manual labor. Most urgently, his doctors warned him that if he did not stop smoking he would be likely to suffer a catastrophic heart attack within three years.

With his mother and stepfather’s assistance, John acquired his own dry cleaning businesses, first in Clarendon, Texas, and later in Belen.

The Barnetts settled into a small home on Cavalier Road., one street west of North Main Street, in Belen. Their dry cleaning business on Reinken Avenue was known as the Sunshine Cleaners.

Despite his doctors’ stern instructions, John continued to smoke, consuming three packs of cigarettes a day. The results were just as his doctors had predicted.

On May 9, 1986, John suffered a massive heart attack and was taken to Lovelace Hospital in Albuquerque for emergency care. Once released, his condition only worsened and he returned to Lovelace in late June.

Doctors concluded that only a heart transplant could save his life, but no hospital in New Mexico had ever performed a heart transplant operation.

New Mexicans who had previously received hearts had to go to medical centers in Tucson, Ariz., Stanford, Calif., or Houston, Texas — too far for John to travel in his weakened condition.

John’s only hope was to be transferred to Presbyterian Hospital, where doctors had been preparing to perform complex heart transplant operations for four years. They were ready by mid-June, just when John’s doctors gave him little time to live.

Placed on total life support, John’s attending doctors thought that he would be fortunate to survive the 10-minute drive from Lovelace to Presbyterian.

Finding a compatible donor

John Barnett was not the ideal candidate for Presbyterian’s new heart transplant program. He was, in fact, probably the worst possible candidate if doctors at the hospital wanted to perform a successful initial surgery.

But John was desperate, and his transplant team’s leader, Dr. Thomas Hoyt, was known as a risk-taker, willing to try to save a life with heroic life-saving efforts if need be.

Now all Hoyt and his medical team at Presbyterian needed was to find a compatible heart donor in time to operate on John. As if by a miracle, a compatible heart suddenly became available just as John needed it most desperately.

Fabian Rivas, a 17-year-old young man from Chama, N.M., had suffered life-threatening injuries in a one-car accident on U.S. 64 in Rio Arriba County on Wednesday, July 2. Treated at the San Juan County Regional Medical Center in Farmington, Rivas, a Dulce High School athlete and the father of two infant children, had told his doctors that he was willing donate his heart if he did not recover. He died of his injuries a week after his accident.

Doctors in Presbyterian Hospital notified John of the availability of a compatible heart and asked him if he was ready to proceed with the transplant. John took a few minutes before declaring that he was indeed ready.

John did not know that his donor was a 17-year-old when he made his decision to proceed with the operation. When he later learned that his donor was a teenage boy, John recalled that he “did a lot of crying” before going to the old King James version of the Bible where “several passages helped me.”

John still fretted, saying, “I’ve got a daughter (Lori) who is 16. You think, Lord, why did a 17-year-old kid have to die so that I could get a few more years?”

The surgery

Everything would have to go perfectly if John’s heart transplant was to succeed. Fortunately, everything did.

First, Fabian Rivas’s heart was removed immediately after his death in the San Juan County Regional Medical Center; it measured no larger than an adult’s fist. Doctors packed the donated heart in a plastic bag filled with saline solution.

Doctors then placed the first bag into two other plastic bags and packed their precious cargo into a cooler filled with ice. Taken to the airport in Farmington, the heart was flown to the Albuquerque International Sunport accompanied by two members of the Presbyterian heart transplant team. An ambulance waited at the airport to transport the heart to Presbyterian Hospital.

Presbyterian’s transplant team of doctors had begun to operate on John as soon as they learned that the donor’s heart had been removed and was enroute by plane. To succeed, doctors had a four-hour window of time from the time a heart was removed from a deceased donor to the time the heart was transplanted and began to pump independently in the waiting patient.

John’s doctors moved swiftly when the heart arrived. They transplanted the vital organ two hours and 35 minutes after it had been removed.

It took only 35 minutes for doctors to surgically connect the new heart after it arrived at Presbyterian. The heart began pumping blood through John’s body at 3:55 a.m. The entire procedure was completed at 5:40 a.m. on July 8, 1986.

Post-op

John Barnett remained in Presbyterian’s recovery unit for several hours before he was wheeled to a room in the cardiac center on the seventh floor. A newspaper photo shows John giving the thumbs up sign as he was wheeled down the hall. Banner headlines in the Albuquerque Tribune announced, “Belen Man Gets New Heart.”

Pleased with the surgery, Dr. Hoyt told the press that the donor’s heart was “very good” and the match to the patient “was fine.” According to Hoyt, the “prognosis is excellent.”

By noon, John’s wife, Nancy, got to see him. She reported that he was able to nod to her. Nancy and the doctors observed that his normal color was returning.

Nancy and three of John’s daughters had waited through the surgery. Before going under, John had asked Nancy to remarry him. Kiddingly, she had refused. Now she told their daughters that she would gladly remarry their father if he survived.

John soon wanted to talk, but with a breathing tube in his throat he could only write short notes.

“I was surprised how easy it was,” he wrote.

In fact, John claimed that it was less painful than his bypass operations had been. Those earlier procedures had been so painful that he had vowed never to be “opened up” again.

Making steady progress, John’s condition was upgraded from critical to serious on Monday, July 14. As if to celebrate, he took six steps in his hospital room that day.

By mid-week a cardiologist said that John’s transplanted heart “couldn’t look finer.” A visitor, Rev. Charles Bascue of the Calvary Baptist Church in Belen, reported that John’s “desire is to beat this. He’s a real fighter.”

Family members were also allowed to visit, although they each had to scrub up before entering his room. Displaying his optimism and improved health, John often wore a T-shirt with the #1 on it.

Nurses asked if he would like to take a wheelchair tour of the hospital’s seventh floor. He replied that he would prefer a tour of Albuquerque’s Old Town, but he would take what he could get.

John eventually walked about 80 feet from his room to a news conference, with reporters and photographers wearing face masks to reduce the spread of germs. The session was limited to just three questions.

John told the assembled newsmen that he felt better than he had in 25 years.

“I feel I have a lot ahead of me,” he said. “Living is the only thing. I was a dead man when I came in here. I couldn’t raise my head. I couldn’t raise my hands. I couldn’t do nothing. I know that, but now every day is better.”

Grateful for all the well-wishes and donations he and his family received, John proclaimed, “I tell ya, New Mexico is super.”

(Part II will be published in next week’s News-Bulletin.)

(La Historia del Rio Abajo is a regular column about Valencia County history written by members of the Valencia County Historical Society since 1998.

Opinions expressed in this and all columns of La Historia del Rio Abajo are the author’s alone and not necessarily those of the Valencia County Historical Society or any other group or individual.)