Wolverhampton grandmother dies 36 years after heart transplant meant to last just five
A grandmother has died 36 years after having a heart transplant that was only expected to give her five more years.
Evelyn Powell of Wednesfield defied medical experts expectations by living more than half her age with a man's heart beating inside her.
Her children say the achievement made her one of the world's longest surviving heart transplant recipients.
After contracting a dangerous muscle virus in 1986 the mother-of-two was given five weeks to live if she did not have a successful heart transplant.
When a heart was found Evelyn underwent a ten-hour operation and then recuperated for months in the grounds of Papworth Hospital, Cambridgeshire.
Evelyn's two children went to live at their grandmother's house during their mum's treatment but remembered when she returned to Wednesfield she wanted to make every day count.
Son Alan told the Express & Star: "Mum was determined to live life to the fullest after her operation. She was told her heart was from a man who was older than her which might give her an extra five years with us.
"She lived on for more than 30 years with this man's heart and used to say he would have lived a long life if he had not had the accident which killed him.
"She was really well known around Wolverhampton through her work in charity shops and being out and about in Fallings Park."
After the heart transplant Evelyn had to take a strong cocktail of anti-rejection drugs which took their toll on her body.
Alan said: "Because the drugs were so strong and she took them for so long she ended up needing a kidney transplant. But she just got on with it. She used to say 'life is like a treadmill - you just have to keep on going' and that became her motto."
As the years passed by Evelyn realised she had lived longer than the vast majority of heart transplant recipients but did not want to be known as a "record-breaker".
Alan said: "Mum was adamant she did not want to be known as the longest surviving heart transplant recipient, she told her doctors she did not want to know because if she was people would always be thinking she will be the next to die. But she certainly lived with a heart transplant longer than almost anyone in our country, more than half her life."
When she had her transplant being a grandmother was a far off dream but her new heart meant she had three grandchildren and she would spend every minute possible with them.
Alan, 47, said: "Mum loved being with her grandchildren and took them on holiday every year for 14 years, she was so happy when the first one was born because she never thought she would live to be a grandmother."
Ever-thankful for her new heart Evelyn volunteered at Wolverhampton's British Heart Foundation shop for 20 years before helping out at Oxfam for several years.
Despite getting tired relatively easily and being quite strenuous Evelyn enjoyed attending line-dancing sessions at Our Lady and St Chad's Academy.
Always quick with a joke and a laugh Alan will miss his mother's sense of humour the most.
He said: "She had a great sense of humour and we used to laugh a lot as a family, the last time I remember us all laughing together was in hospital when she could not stop laughing at a fellow patient who kept on breaking wind.
"So many people have come up to me around town asking how she is, she really made a big impression of a lot people and was really well liked.
"She loved her cake as well, she always treated herself and her grandchildren to cake whenever they went to town."
Evelyn suffered a series of strokes over the past 18 months and first entered hospital in Spring last year.
Alan said: "We knew she wasn't well when she came back from hospital and said she did not like cake, we thought she might have dementia, but doctors said she might have had several mini-strokes."
Evelyn was forced to return to hospital where she died last week, aged 71, and not from heart failure, her second hand heart never let her down.
