New Heart

<p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Dion Perry's doctor initially suspected he had asthma upon hearing he did not feel well. </span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>So he was sent to the local hospital for a chest X-ray and a lung function test. The results were definitive: He did not have asthma. </span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>The mystery was solved when his doctor placed her fingers on his wrist to feel his pulse. </span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>She told him his heart was beating out of step before returning with a senior doctor who gave him a referral to a cardiologist. A few days later the author was breathlessly trying to chainsaw up split and stack some wood from some logs he'd dropped in the yard a couple of months prior. Later that afternoon not feeling well he went to see an acupuncturist who wanted to take him straight to Goulburn Hospital. </span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Instead he went home only to be phoned by a doctor who sent an ambulance to pick him up. </span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>It was the beginning of a journey with lots of twists and turns that left him with a new heart more than two years later.</span></p>