ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, June 9, 1996 TAG: 9606070014
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
REMEMBER PETIE?
Michelle "Petie" Lineberry, the New River Valley's sweetheart. Her round face, toothy grin and big brown eyes looked at all of us from newspapers and television screens a decade ago, mounting a well-nigh irresistible plea.
Lineberry, a Radford University student, had terminal heart disease. Without the transplant her uninsured father could not afford, doctors said she would soon be dead.
Those buttons with Lineberry's face in the middle said it all:
"Have a Heart for Petie."
Of course we did.
Lineberry has long since vanished from the public eye.
But for anyone who has wondered whatever happened to the girl with the plucky spirit - well, truth to tell, Lineberry is throwing a party this week.
For her heart.
Or, as the invitation says:
"Michelle Petie Lineberry invites you to the celebration of a heart that's 10 years wiser."
It was June 13, 1986 - a Friday - when Lineberry received the heart of an 18-year-old traffic accident victim from Dallas.
She has never known the identity of the donor.
Doctors said Lineberry's own heart, possibly damaged by a virus, had all but quit by the time they replaced it. They told her she could count on five years with her new heart.
"I think, `Well, I've doubled that,''' said Lineberry, now 30. "That's great. ... My heart is actually doing really good."
"The 10 years - it makes you reflect. I feel like my 20s were very much centered on my heart, and who I was before that got lost. I look forward to my 30s."
She isn't about to complain. How could she? She nearly did not get them at all.
But in some ways, these have not been easy years for Lineberry - her new heart notwithstanding.
Of course, life is not so easy for the rest of us, either.
And yet, doesn't some part of us want to think the girl who got the new heart lived happily ever after? That she took up residence in fairyland - and not here among the living, where that mixed blessing called existence gives all alike their share of highs and lows?
In 10 years, Petie has graduated from college - but had to reconcile herself to never having children. Doctors said childbirth would put too much strain on her heart.
She has gone to work - only to have to give it up for health reasons.
And, in what she calls the worst thing ever to befall her - worse than the trauma of her own heart transplant - Lineberry, who got married in 1991, has since separated, pending divorce.
A devout Catholic who seldom talks of her operation without also giving thanks above, Lineberry feels the breakup - which she said was initiated by her husband - is a betrayal not only of her vows to him, but of her vows to God.
Then, too, a new heart can carry burdens the rest of us will never know. Lineberry, musing recently in her journal, wrote of the upcoming anniversary:
"I think about the person whose heart I have. About the family who gave it to me. Are they counting on me? I'm thinking, `Wow! 10 years!' They are thinking, `It's been 10 years since she died.' Sometimes I feel like I should be doing more."
None of this keeps Lineberry from being acutely grateful.
The anniversary of her transplant at Virginia Commonwealth University's Medical College of Virginia is always a happy day for her, she said, and never more so than now.
She has sent out dozens of invitations for an all-night party at her tiny house in Floyd County, where she plans to ring in her new heart's second decade with volleyball, badminton, croquet, and when the sun goes down, dancing.
"I consider it a lot like my birthday,'' she said of June 13, the day she had the transplant. "It's always a good day for me. That's how I think of it."
Lineberry was a junior at Radford University when her heart gave up, sometime in the spring of 1986. She had been diagnosed earlier with a heart murmur, she said, though it was not considered serious.
But she had had a cold all semester. Then, after finishing her final exams on a Friday afternoon in May, she went home and collapsed.
Tests at MCV soon showed that one side of her heart was pumping only a fraction of the blood it should have been pumping.
Doctors weren't sure what happened - but they knew there wasn't much time.
There also, unfortunately, wasn't much money. Bill Lineberry had been laid off from his job at the now defunct Fairlawn AT&T plant in November, and his benefits had run out.
So, those touched by Petie's plight chipped in what they could. To help raise the $100,000-plus there were walk-a-thons and benefit concerts. Fraternities held fund-raisers.
Bill Lineberry - known locally for his long-running radio show, "Billy's Bluegrass," even got his ham radio buddies to help out.
In the end, Bill Lineberry said, the fund-raising collected some $50,000 toward Petie's operation and medical expenses, while the state picked up the rest.
"We still thank everybody for what they did. We don't ever forget that," said Bill Lineberry, who now sells John Deere tractors. "It's definitely been a success."
Heart transplants have come far from the pioneering days of the 1960s, when patients often died in a matter of months.
In those days, said MCV's Maureen Flattery, doctors suppressed a patient's immune system so much in an effort to keep the body from rejecting the new organ that the patient often succumbed to infection instead. Since then, "We've learned that's not necessary," said Flattery, a registered nurse and a coordinator of MCV's transplant program.
Meanwhile, the introduction of new medications for transplant patients in the mid-1980s sent survival rates soaring, she said.
Some 2,000 people a year worldwide now receive new hearts, Flattery said. There are no clear limits to the life span of a heart transplant patient any more - although logic says it is probably somewhat shorter than the threescore and 10 the rest of us can expect. The longest-lived heart transplant recipient in MCV's program to date died a couple of years ago, some 20 years after receiving his new heart.
The cause?
"Throat cancer," Flattery said. "He smoked."
Other heart recipients have finished college - like Lineberry, who completed her degree in child development and family life at Radford in 1988 - and, in one case, law school. They have held down jobs and even given birth - although childbirth is something Lineberry's doctors have forbidden her.
Lineberry's life is restricted in other ways. Her heart is healthy, she said, but in recent years the medications she must take for the rest of her life have begun to take a toll. Though she is reluctant to discuss such problems in detail, Lineberry has trouble with her joints and must work to keep her down her weight. Both are problems associated with medication given to transplant patients.
It is such side effects that lead Flattery to say of heart transplants, "It's not for everyone. You trade problems."
Lineberry has no regrets.
She spends her days now gardening, painting - a college passion she hadn't indulged in again until recently - watching birds, taking walks. She knits, makes Spanish pinatas for the neighborhood children. She lives alone with her dog, Isabella, but visits often with neighbors and her father and stepmother, who live just up the road. Lineberry's mother died in an automobile accident several years before her transplant.
She stargazes. "It's incredible out here," she said of the nighttime views. "You see stars, and you see stars behind the stars, and stars behind those stars.
"I've never been a person to get bored," Lineberry said. "I always seem to be thinking about something or doing something. I've got 10 projects going on."
She may be a decade older, but the brown eyes and broad smile of the 1986 photographs haven't changed. Lineberry likes to laugh, and sometimes puts her head back and laughs from down deep - an act that seems to involve all her body and soul.
And why not?
Lineberry recently made a list in her journal of the things she has to celebrate:
"In the past 10 years I have been educated; I have worked with good people and lovely children (I remember every single one). I have traveled; I have married; I am a Big Sister to a Little Sister [Nicole Harrell of Christiansburg]; I was given a precious little dog and she loves me unconditionally: I have seen my sister Veronika, who does promotions for the syndicated television show ``Wheel of Fortune''] prosper in every way; I have see the births of children from dear friends ... and I have realized that I am a very strong woman."
Those who had a heart for Petie, meanwhile, might think of this as they drop off to sleep next Saturday night:
She'll be dancing all night long.
LENGTH: Long : 174 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: GENE DALTON/Staff 1. ``I look forward to my 30s,''by CNBsays Petie Lineberry.
2. In a story following Lineberry's surgery in 1986, the caption
for the photo (left) read: ``Climbing stairs is no longer impossible
for Petie Lineberry.'' 3. Today, Lineberry counts her blessings;
among them, her dog, Isabella (above). color. KEYWORDS: PROFILE