Baldwin Hills man receives rare life-saving triple organ transplant

On the verge of death and with his heart, liver and kidney failing, Valance Sams Sr. had only one hope of living past 46 — a triple organ transplant.

His would be the 46th procedure ever conducted.

"Every day was a different challenge," said Sams. "You don't have no energy to do anything. You're just feeling real bad all the time. It's real bad when the heart starts to malfunction. It's no joke."

Ten years ago, doctors diagnosed Sams with sarcoidosis, a rare disease that created a build-up of scar tissue on his heart. The condition took over his life. He could barely sleep, let alone lay down. He struggled to walk from his doorstep to his car, having to stop every other moment to catch his breath.

At the beginning of this year, Sams' condition worsened. The sarcoidosis became too much for his body to handle causing his heart, liver and one of his kidneys to fail. His pacemaker, which is meant to help his heart beat at a normal rate, shocked him 21 times before he checked himself into the hospital. 

"The organs were just going down," he said. "They've been hanging in there for 10 years. At the end, they were getting worse."

He remained at the hospital for two months. Scared, nervous and feeling every emotion associated with death, the father of three simply prayed that the doctors could figure out some way to save his life. 

Well into his two-month stay, doctors discovered an organ donor whose heart, kidney and liver were a complete match for Sams. 

"He was very ill," said Dr. Tyler Gunn, Sams' heart surgeon at Cedars-Sinai. "Without this transplant in a timely manner, he likely would not have survived."

With his second lease on life within his grasp, Sams said the nerves disappeared. 

"I just went in there totally positive," he said. "I wasn't thinking about nothing negative. They made me aware of the inevitable could happen but I wouldn't let nothing negative come into my mind."

According to United Network Organ Sharing, the governmental agency that tracks transplants, this was a very rare procedure as only 45 people had undergone the same surgery. 

Very few doctors at Cedars-Sinai, one of the preeminent hospitals in Los Angeles County,  had any experience with triple transplants but felt their experience with double organ transplants prepared them for the operation. According to Gunn, his team of heart surgeons performs about 120-130 heart transplants a year or about two to three a week.

"We thought it was a great opportunity to put this experience to the test and do our first heart, liver, kidney transplant," he said.

The procedure took 20 hours. 

While exhausting, Gunn viewed it as one of the crowning achievements of his career and was grateful that he helped Sams recover from what could have been a deadly disease. 

"While he waited on the list for three organs, there's always that chance his number may not be called and that's difficult for everybody," said Gunn. "I saw him back in the clinic after the surgery and he was very strong.. and I'm really encouraged by his progress so far."

Sams stayed in the hospital for about a week before getting discharged and remained on the road to recovery for nearly two months.

"I've been waiting on this for 10 years and I finally made it," he said. "I'm gonna do my best to recover and work hard and do everything I'm supposed to from the diet to the medication to the physical training and everything. I've been dedicated and it's all be paying off."

Now, several months after the surgery, Sams is back in his Baldwin Hills home. He's regained much of his strength and is able to sleep in his own bed. He's finally able to walk from his doorstep to his car without much effort or breaks to catch his breath. But most importantly for Sams, he's back spending time with his sons.

All of this wouldn't have been possible without the help of the man's organs now pumping blood into Sams' veins. Grateful to be free of the decade's worth of pain, Sams hopes to meet the donor's family to thank them.

"I'm so thankful and grateful for their blessing," he said. "Definitely want to keep his legacy going. And I'm anxious to find out what that was."

Gunn added that Sams' recovery would not have been possible without an organ donor.

"The reason we were able to do this and help so many people, simply put, is organ donation," the doctor said. "It's an option that each person has to potentially be a donor if the situation arises. This is an example of what can become of that. THis is a person who was very sick, was young and likely did not have any other options left. Because of the gracious donation of this donor and their family, he's able to continue his life at a highly functional level and be there for his family."

If you would like to be an organ donor, you can find more information here.