Francisko Du Plessis with his medals from the Whaka 25 mountain biking event. Photo / Bob Tulloch
Two years ago, Francisko Du Plessis was told he had only a few weeks left to live.
Today, the South African ex-pat is living happily with his family in Tauranga and is competing in sporting events thanks to a donor heart.
Du Plessis was diagnosed with heart failure in 2016 while living in South Africa and he spent a year in and out of hospital until he got his symptoms under control and could return to his job of installing heat pumps and air conditioners.
In 2019, he moved his family to New Zealand to give his three children a better future. He was still on chronic medications, but he was doing well – he even picked up mountain biking.
“I was doing regular 20km to 50km bike rides with my friends,” he said.
Suddenly, in June 2022, everything started crashing.
“My heart function went down and that started affecting all the other organs as well, everything started to shut down.”
Du Plessis could still walk, but he was drained of energy and a week later he could barely get himself up.
“The cardiologist came in, sat at the corner of the room and rubbed his head in his hands and said to me, ‘We don’t know what to do any more, we can’t treat you here any more.’”
He was taken to the cardiology unit at Auckland City Hospital by helicopter where doctors broke the news to Du Plessis and his wife Adelle that he had less than six months to live.
A couple of hours passed, and the doctors returned to say they were wrong – he had a few weeks to live.
“But we’ve got a plan,” they said.
Two days later, on July 8, 2022, Du Plessis went in for his first operation where he received a ventricle assist device (VAD) on the left side of his heart.
The right side of his heart was helped along by an external ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) machine that pumps blood.
But he soon needed a VAD for the right side of his heart as well – his second surgery.
Then, the following day, he had to return to the theatre again due to internal bleeding – his third open-heart surgery in two weeks.
Du Plessis also suffered from a mini-stroke during this time which affected the right side of his body and face.
He slept in a medically induced coma for three-and-a-half weeks in the cardio intensive care unit.
“When I woke up, I had gone down from almost 100kg in weight to 63kg.
“That’s more than a third of my body weight gone. There was no muscle in my arms, I couldn’t lift my arms or legs up.”
Du Plessis spent two-and-a-half months in the hospital’s intensive care unit (ICU). After that it was a stepdown ward for three-and-a-half weeks for further physio and recovery, and then another three-and-a-half weeks in a rehab centre called Hearty Towers for lung and heart transplant patients.
“I met a lot of wonderful people there. Everybody’s got their own story and it was really special to hear them all and learn and support each other,” he said.
At the end of October in 2022, he finally got to go home with all of his cables and battery bags that nurses nicknamed his “Louis Vuitton bags”.
Wife Adelle was there “the whole time”, Du Plessis said.
“Every week she would be there, even while I was asleep she would be sitting there next to my bed.”
Adelle had to explain to their children – Mckenzie (now 12), Mckayla (now 10) and Francisko (now 8) – as best she could about their father’s health concerns.
“They came to visit me in hospital one time after I woke up, but I was still looking like a skeleton. My wife never brought them in again for quite a while.”
While Du Plessis was in and out of hospital, Adelle took on the full responsibility of keeping their family going. She was helped “hugely” by “wonderful” friends from all over the world who pitched in however they could.
Du Plessis said his wife also had to earn an income to keep the family going. Without residency, the family were unable to get government funding to help.
“My wife has a small business that she was trying to get off the ground, so in between being in Auckland, and running a small business and looking after the kids, she worked her backside off.”
In November, Du Plessis’ parents came over to visit from Australia, “and they were so kind to bring me Covid,” he said jokingly.
“I was going to go on the transplant active waiting list at the beginning of December, but of course, I got Covid in November so they said ‘no’ and that I had to wait a seven-week stepdown period.
“Finally in January 2023, I went on the active list. I was on a waiting list for 19 days and I got the call. I was really lucky.”
Du Plessis said he had a common blood type which gave him a higher chance of success.
“One of my transplant buddies had to wait about 18 months for his transplant.”
On the day he received the call, he had been preparing for his first day of work in seven months.
“Then suddenly, my phone rings and it’s the transplant co-ordinator and she goes, ‘Cisko, we need you to go to Auckland very quickly, we might have something for you.’”
Du Plessis packed his stuff into the car and headed to Auckland.
He was nervous, excited and relieved to be getting rid of the “Louis Vuitton bags”.
He arrived in Auckland about noon and that evening, just after 5pm, he went into the theatre.
Heart transplants usually take six or seven hours but Du Plessis’ took 14-and-a-half. His lung had grown over one of the pumps, the surgeons struggled to get the new heart going, and at one point he bled out on the table.
“They had to replace about 80% of my blood.
“After the surgery, I was placed in a medically induced coma for six days to allow the heart to rest and recover. Normally it is about two to three days, but I had the ECMO machine on again to give the new heart a rest to recover from it all.”
On the seventh day after his surgery, he went into rehab and, when he woke up, he said he could feel the energy from the new heart.
“It was crazy. I could feel the blood rush through my ears and my toes felt warm. They hadn’t felt warm in quite a long time.”
Two days after waking up, Du Plessis was asked to try walking.
“I’m used to struggling and running out of breath because of the pumps not getting the oxygen through the muscles.
“And then, after going about 30m, I realised, this is different. The oxygen is there, the energy is there, I looked at the physio and the nurse pushing the drips and said to them, ‘Okay, keep up’.
“I started going faster, and they just had to run behind.”
Du Plessis said he was surprised with how quickly he recovered.
“My body just went with it, and that feeling of life, it was just incredible.”
Du Plessis started back at work in April last year.
He has since taken part in the Whaka100 mountain bike race, the largest mountain bike event in the Southern Hemisphere.
He completed the race and came 360th of around 600 riders.
Du Plessis continues to travel up to Auckland for check-ups with a cardiologist and said a month after his transplant surgery he felt better than he ever had.
His energy levels were much higher than before because he had been living with a heart functioning at about 25%. Normally people have between 50% to 70%.
Du Plessis said it was hard to come to terms with having a heart that once belonged to another, something he was processing with the help of a psychologist.
“The first couple of weeks in hospital [after his transplant surgery] I cried a lot thinking about it, lying there listening to your heart and you think about that family that had to make that choice of organ donation while still in shock of losing a loved one.
“Around the one-year mark, at the beginning of this year, I suddenly had a mental breakdown again, we had lost four transplant bodies in the space of two to three months.”
When asked what he would say to someone considering becoming an organ donor, he responded: “You will be a hero, you will change not only the recipient’s life, but also their kids’, their family’s and everyone around them”.
“Just having that time back with my kids, it’s the greatest gift ever.
“There’s a lot of people on the list, a lot of people needing organs and there aren’t very many donors, even though there could be.”
To those needing an organ, he said: “Keep on fighting. You have to keep positive, you have to keep fighting because as soon as you have your body in a state of positivity, the body just kicks into overdrive and tries to fix it. Don’t lose hope.”
Du Plessis is encouraging people to talk about organ donation with their families.
“Those closest to you, let them know your wishes to donate because you never know what happens tomorrow. And, when your soul has moved on and only the body is left, they will have the final say on what happens to it.”
Du Plessis said he was massively grateful to his donor and their family for saving his life and giving him more time with his family.
Organ Donation New Zealand is having a Thank You Day on Saturday for organ donation recipients to come together and thank their donors on social media to raise awareness for organ donation.
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