Heartfelt thanks after 25 years of a new ticker

Brian Jaffray's new heart was stitched in to his chest 25 years and a few days ago. Brian isn't quite sure exactly who is the longest surviving heart transplant patient in Ireland, but he's right up there.

Now a quarter of a century on since his life was saved by a person he never met, Brian wants to thank the man or woman who gave him the chance to get married and have kids. His harvested heart was a gift from a family who somehow managed to find clear thinking time for love and giving in their darkest days. I can only imagine how tough it was back then for those who lost a loved one.

That one heart gave life to five lives. Brian was just 28 when he was saved and he was a single man. Brian's wife Caroline and sons Daniel, Eoin and Andrew are a family thanks to a family.

This publicity lark isn't really Brian's style. But after weeks of agonising, he felt he had to go public to give thanks, and to encourage those who are worried about the future.

In he goes for the last 25 years to the Heart and Lung Transplant Unit in The Mater, with his head down, and he's plugged in to his ear phones.

Brian hardly looks up at the other patients waiting for their news. It's his way of coping. "It may seem as if I'm ignoring the other survivors. I hardly ever even think of the fact that I have a second heart. Most people don't even know. Some haven't been lucky. This can go wrong. Thinking about it too much can get to you."

It has always been this way. Brian had an operation for a hole in his heart when he was a kid but his parents made sure their son had a normal upbringing.

He played football and rugby in his beloved Tullamore, where he lives now after a stint in Dublin.

We are good friends. When I started off writing here 17 years ago, Brian gave me the confidence I lacked. I came from a family of literary high achievers and never spent so much as a day in journalism college. So there I was loading my insecurities on Brian and I never knew he had plenty to think about himself.

Independent News & Media's head of sports content Dave Courtney tells of Brian's "consummate professionalism. I would describe him as a journalist's journalist". Brian has what the London taxi drivers describe as "The Knowledge". And there was always empathy, but with an eagle eye out for errors.

Brian came back to Tullamore from Dublin to look after his elderly parents, who have since passed on. He was always a Tullamore boy. Home is now where his heart is. It was payback time. His mother and father minded the little boy with the hole in his heart so well. Brian now works at his own business as a communications and social media consultant. He specifically asked me not to mention that. So there Brian, it's now my turn to edit you.

I was in Brian's house one time and got to nosing about. There was a framed newspaper page in an alcove off the hallway. That was when I found out. Brian wrote a beautiful piece when he was saved. The first lines read: "I could count the remaining days of my life by flicking through three pages of a calendar. March, April, May…RIP. I was dying."

Our then editor Vinnie Doyle called to The Mater to see Brian. "There I was lying on my back, with tubes stuck in everywhere, and there was the boss getting me to write a piece. I was delighted to be asked as it meant there would be no petting or mollycoddling. I think Vinnie knew that was what I needed at that time."

He wrote of the 26-year-old him, waiting for the call for the transplant, wondering and wasting. Two years it took, with false alarms and heart rejections in between, and he was only given a year to live. Brian was still just a young lad and he never let his problem get in the way of a good time. The young Jaffray used to switch off the bleeper from the Mater transplant people when he went to Bad Bob's Backstage Bar "in case I got lucky".

The humour, too, sustained him. His old sports editor, PJ Cunningham, recalls how it was that people "queued up to be insulted by him ... only they are not real insults, just little put downs that somehow make you feel better. That is his gift".

His cardiologist, the late Brian Maurer, was like a father to the young boy and then man. Surgeon Freddy Wood looked at Brian's old heart after the transplant. It was three times the normal size. "The size of a cow's heart," he said.

Brian wrote from the ticker. "These were the glorious opening moments of a new life. Hang in there, heart."

Nowadays Brian is being looked after by his GP, Dr David Bartlett, and Professor Jim O'Neill who is an Offaly man. "I'm so lucky to be minded so well by such fine people. It's more than a job. They really care."

Caroline was with Brian when the beeper went off 25 years ago. She's a Donegal woman and is not one for giving up. "I was always treated as just a husband and a father. There are days when I get down. Caroline is always there with the daily resurrection. I owe it to the person who died that I might live to make the most out of the life he or she never had. I don't even know if I would be able to meet the family. I just want them to know I'm doing well."

Today at noon in the chapel in the Mater, Brian Jaffray will attend his 25th Mass in honour of those who gave life to so many. And on every year of the previous 24, Brian lit a candle.

He will light another today and say a little prayer too for a person he never knew, and a family he never met, who gave him a second shot at life. Brian, my friend, you have honoured their love and generosity. Happy 25th, heart.