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False Alarm For Man Waiting For Heart Transplant

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – It was supposed to be the happy ending to a story we've been following for nearly a year.

Moses Hart has been waiting for more than three-years for a heart transplant, and yesterday he got the call he's been waiting for.

But that excitement didn't last long when he had to leave the hospital without a new heart.

"I ran over here, I packed everything I needed to pack and ran over," Hart told KDKA's Brenda Waters yesterday.

In his one block run from home to Allegheny General Hospital, Moses actually beat his surgical team to the hospital, but hours later he would get the blow he and his wife Donna knew was possible but did not expect.

The donor heart was not suitable; Moses would not get a new heart this time.

"Felt like, you're on a natural high, then a natural low, you just drop right there," Hart said.

Donna Hart felt the blow as well.

"It was tough to hear, of course my thoughts were with him. I knew he was going to take it hard cause we waiting so long, three years… three years," she said.

Things were almost set to go, the donor heart was at AGH, Moses was in the operating room connected to an IV and had a series of tests completed, but this would not be his time.

Doctor Raymond Benza from Allegheny General's Cardiovascular Institute says they don't know whether the heart will be suitable to be transplanted until it's inspected.

"This particular heart was very thick. When you put a thick heart into a recipient who is already ravaged by the ordeal of heart failure, these thick hearts don't work because when you take the organ out of the body it swells," Benza says.

This particular heart wasn't transplanted in any patient.

Although it was a huge let down for Moses, Donna, and the medical team, getting several calls is not unheard of.

Meantime Moses will remain connected to the artificial heart to survive, and he remains positive.

"A trial run, that's what it was. I'm looking it as a trial run. I'm going to stay positive. It will come."

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