Former mayor recovers from heart transplant

A former mayor of Wolverhampton is recovering at home after a heart transplant operation.

Councillor Malcolm Gwinnett, who represents the city's Spring Vale ward told today how he believed he was two days from death when he went into the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham for the procedure on January 14.

Less than a month later the father of four, a Liberal Democrat representing the Spring Vale ward, is back home and recuperating.

The 59-year-old was suffering from cardiomyopathy, or heart muscle disease.

Councillor Gwinnett, today praised the surgeons who gave him a new lease on life. He was told he would not be allowed to know whose heart is now beating in his chest.

But he said: "I was in intensive care and when I say intensive, I mean intensive. There was one-to-one care with someone watching 20 different pieces of equipment. I cannot praise the hospital highly enough.

"The cost of the bed alone was £2,500 a day and that's before the costs of the doctors, the nurses and the medicines."

The transplant finally happened after three failed attempts. In each case Councillor Gwinnett, of Coalport Road, East Park, was called to the hospital.

But when doctors examined the donor hearts problems were found and the procedures cancelled.

"When I went in for the transplant the next thing I knew was in the intensive care unit," he said. "They were absolutely brilliant."

He now expects to be up and around by June but his recovery could take around 12 months.