Dan Weiniger's LVAD

My friend Dan Weiniger has a bad heart. After a sucessful quintuple bypass 14 years ago everything was fine until last week when Dan suffered a heart attack. The heart attack did severe damage to his heart. Dan is now in heart failure and another bypass is not an option. Neither are new drugs or stents.

Fortunately there is hope. On Monday Dan is having open heart surgery to have a Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD) inserted. The LVAD helps the heart do it's job. These devices help people live for years while awaiting a heart transplant.

The LVAD is a mechanical pump. One end of it goes into the left ventricle which is the chamber that pumps blood into the body and the other end goes in the aorta which is the body's main artery. A tube passes through the skin connecting the device to a computer, batteries and power pack. The power pack has to be recharged at night. 

Where Dan lives in NJ, the area has had three power outages of over a week in length in the last few years. Dan can never be without electricty because the power pack must be recharged daily. For that reason I am raising money to have a whole house generator installed at Dan's home.