Sparta's Maloney has a heart changing Easter

SPARTA — Tim Maloney of Sparta is a grateful man. He's also a proud volunteer at the NJ Sharing Network, speaking at hospitals and all over about donating organs. Thanks to an Easter miracle and a heart transplant, Maloney is alive today.

It started in 2010. A highly successful financial expert working on Wall Street, Maloney commuted into New York City and enjoyed spending time with his daughter, Jenna. The recently divorced Maloney was visiting his mother, in his hometown of Sparta, and woke up with what he describes as, “my heart beating out of my chest.” He got to Newton Memorial Hospital and they immediately discovered his heart was racing at more than 200 beats per minute and got him on a table with the paddles.

“Newton Memorial saved me,” Maloney said. “They put in a temporary pace maker and had me transported to Morristown Memorial.”

There, he was given a permanent pace maker and as fate would have it, a man named Dr. Zuker, the head of the heart transplant program at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center, happened to be filling in.

From 2010 to 2012, Maloney continued making the commute into the city with his pace maker in his chest and a defibrillator on hand and continued to see Dr. Zuker. In 2012, he was told he would need a transplant and was put on the national list to try to find a match.

“There are lots of criteria to find a match,” Maloney said.

Blood type and enzymes have to match along with a lot of other specifications. They put a PICC line (a Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter which is a soft plastic tube — like an intravenous that allows you to receive medicines and fluids) in his arm, and he thought he'd be good for a few years until a heart might become available.

That wasn't the case. March came, and Maloney developed a bad infection due to the PICC line. Turns out that infection may have saved his life because at the hospital, doctors discovered that his heart had deteriorated and was only functioning at three percent. Maloney was put on life support and his status on the transplant list was moved up.

For the next five weeks, Maloney was on life support, laying on his back and barely able to move while a balloon-like device stretched from his groin to heart that kept him alive.

“It was so mental at that point,” he said, “I didn't know if I'd get a new heart and it was stressful and scary.”

Then, on Easter Sunday, a 17-year-old male from someplace in Florida died.

“He was too young to have consented to be an organ donor, so his family must have made the decision to help others live though he had died,” Maloney said.

The heart was rushed up to Beth Israel, and then 38-year-old Maloney had the transplant on Easter, 2012.

Doctors discovered his old heart had Sarcoidosis, a disease of unknown cause that leads to inflammation. Normally, the immune system defends the body, but in Maloney's case, the viral disease had attacked his heart. He has no family history of heart disease.

Looking back, Maloney said the surgery was the easiest part. Laying on his back for five weeks on life support had its ramifications, and he lost 65 pounds and much of the muscle in his back and legs. He had to learn how to walk again and adopt a new diet exceptionally low in sodium and sugar.

“I'm a type A personality so I was extremely motivated to stick to the program,” Maloney said.

His body never tried to reject the transplant, and he takes anti-rejection medication and a vitamin daily.

“People who have had transplants tend to run into problems if they stop following the program,” he said. “You have to be meticulous with your diet and you can't go out and eat a pizza pie and pitcher of beer.”

Maloney has written a letter of thanks to the family of the 17-year-old who's heart saved his life.

“It's a system where he is a donor number and I am a transplant number and hopefully it will work out that the family gets my letter and that hopefully one day our paths will cross. I am so grateful," Maloney said.

“Going through what I did dramatically changed my perspective on everything,” Maloney said.

Maloney's daughter is now eight and he said was too young at the time to really know what was going on.

“She just knows that Daddy got a new heart,” he said.