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Kim and Carey Hanes
“As long as there’s life, there’s hope,” said Dublin native Kim Hanes. “We’ve always lived by that.”
It’s advice that’s been beneficial to her and her husband, Carey, who is facing a heart transplant soon.
An online fundraiser has been set up to benefit the family who lived in Dublin for several years before moving to Mount Pleasant. (The page can be found by searching for “New Heart for Carey” on gofundme.com.)
Carey’s heart issues began in 2012.
“He thought he had a toothache one day,” Kim remembered. “We went to the ER, and they said he was having a heart attack.”
What seemed like a simple visit led to a quadruple bypass and 14 days in the hospital, where they installed a pacemaker.
His next attack came two years ago when they were moving from Dublin.
The couple was packed and set to leave town when Carey got stung by a red wasp. As they were leaving, he had a sudden impulse to get a last look at Dublin’s Memorial stadium, where he had seen several games played by his son, Joshua.
While at the stadium, he went into cardiac arrest. He was transported by air to a Fort Worth hospital.
“Within 43 minutes of calling 911 in front of the stadium, he was in surgery in Fort Worth,” Kim said.
The complications led to one of the toughest points in Jan. 2019. Medical staff had drained 51 pounds of fluid off of Carey and wanted him to go on Hospice.
“They sat me down, and said he wasn’t going on to walk out of there,” Kim remembered.
The Hanes family had several visitors following that including witnesses for a will and a woman who was visiting people in the hospital and asked to pray with Carey.
As she prayed and put a hand on Carey, Kim said he immediately reacted like he had been energized.
“Three days later, he was better,” Kim said. The turn-around was so inspiring that all of his doctors came to watch him walk out.
Things went well for Kim and Carey until last month.
The couple had driven on a 6,000 mile road trip to Oregon. “We went to 56 national parks in 13 days,” Kim said. “It was neat. We got home and he was doing fine. We stopped to eat in Dallas when his defibrillator went off and shocked him.”
Carey underwent heart surgery after which his defibrillator activated four or five times. They were going to add a line to the pacemaker until they did testing and found that his heart was performing at less than 10%.
The testing also revealed he was in stage 4 kidney failure, a ‘pretty common occurrence’ in people consistently taking heart medication.
He was in the hospital until last week when his doctors came to Kim and said they thought it was important for him to be at the wedding of their daughter, Katie. He was resistant because of the health risks, but the doctors put him on an infusion pump with ‘liquid rocket fuel’ which kept his heart pumping regularly.
Kim has learned the proper maintenance of the device and had to make sure the medicine is changed routinely.
The rewards seemed to outweigh the risks as Carey told Kim their daughter’s wedding day was one of the happiest days of his life.
They even got to see Dubliner Jason Clark, who acted as DJ for the event.
Kim said they have been overwhelmed by the support from Dublin.
After their son, Joshua, put up the GoFundMe page about Carey’s impending heart transplant, they have had lots of phone calls from people like Mike Fritscher, who Kim called Carey’s spiritual advisor.
She also praised Joshua (who moved from Dublin to help his family) and his childhood friend, Bryen Healey (a Dubliner who has been living in Mount Pleasant) for their assistance and support.
Hospitals actually take support systems into account when determining the success of transplant patients.
Kim has been told he’s a good candidate and they want to get him straight on the transplant list. The operation is also being handled by Houston Methodist, a hospital known for success in transplants.
Although the operation will be covered by insurance, the couple will have to be 30 minutes from Houston for a while, so any donations made to GoFundMe will help with living expenses.
“It’s going to be a long road, but they all believe he has a really good prognosis,” Kim said.
“I just appreciate [the Dublin community’s] support,” she added, saying she’s always considered Dublin her home. “We’ve had a lot of people calling and texting. [We told the transplant team] unless you’re part of a small town, you don’t realize the support. If it affects one of us, it affects us all.”