Middle Ga. heart transplant recipient competes in Transplant Games of America

Three years ago Middle Georgia resident Robert Slaughter struggled to walk to his mailbox. This Father’s Day weekend, he joins thousands of fellow transplant-recipients from more than 40 different states in the Transplant Games of America.

A member of Georgia’s 18-person team, Slaughter will compete in basketball and a 5k walk, two of 20 sports hosted at the six-day tournament in Denver.

Hosted by the Transplant Life Foundation since 2011, the bi-annual event takes place in a different U.S. city each time and includes 60 special events.

The tournament brings together transplant recipients, those awaiting transplants, caregivers, donors and their families in a celebration of resilience and hope.

For Slaughter, that hope came in the form of a new heart. 

In June of 2019, Slaughter suffered a heart attack and had stents put into his heart at the age of 61.

He tried to continue on with his life, but after a year and half, physical activity became a challenge and Slaughter entered advanced heart failure. 

“It wasn’t getting any better,” he said, noting that at night he would wonder if his heart was going to stop beating.

Doctors gave Slaughter an external defibrillator vest to wear. Then he visited the Piedmont Atlanta Hospital in the fall of 2022 to have an internal defibrillator implanted.

But Slaughter said the question still lingered: “How many times would the defibrillator save me?”

At that same Piedmont Atlanta visit, his doctor spoke with him about a heart transplant as a longer-term solution.

Though Slaughter knew little about the organ transplant and donation process, he agreed to the X-rays, scans, blood work and other tests that followed. 

Eligible patients must be sick enough to need an organ transplant, but healthy enough to recover from the procedure, he explained.

By the beginning of 2023, Slaughter had made the waiting list. He told himself, “I’ve done what I can, I’m turning it over to the hand of the Lord.” 

In June, Slaughter’s phone rang at 11:30 p.m. They had found a heart match from a 23-year-old male donor. Slaughter, who needed to be in Atlanta by 7 a.m. the next morning, said his gut reaction was to ask if he could wait for the next available heart.

He took a ride down the street to get himself together, packed a bag and woke his wife Annetta, who drove him to the hospital. 

In Atlanta, Slaughter recalled feeling winded on the walk from the parking deck to the emergency room.

“I was just that bad. Walking from the parking lot, I could not do it,” he said.

But by 6 p.m. after his afternoon surgery, Slaughter could stand up. He spent 11 days in the hospital, where he took more steps and pushed himself farther each day. 

“By the time I left out of there, I was walking pretty good,” Slaughter said. 

Upon returning for checkups, he joined a monthly transplant support group, where he first learned about the Transplant Games. He also became an ambassador for LifeLink,  a national network that assists in organ transplant procurement and education.

“I want to do everything that I can to help somebody else,” Slaughter said. 

After each support gathering, members meet with pre and post-transplant patients. Slaughter tells them to keep their head up and shares his own experiences as a patient nearly three years post-transplant.

Slaughter also had the opportunity to thank his donor’s family. He said the donor’s mother plans to attend the Denver tournament so she too can see how her son’s heart gave a stranger a second chance at life.

With father’s day fast approaching, Slaughter said it “means the world” to be with his five daughters and five grandkids and present “to see those kids and those grandkids continue to grow.”