Wearing Your Heart in a Bag

It’s not uncommon for a 23-year-old to wear his heart on his sleeve – but what about in his backpack? Stan Larkin, a patient at University of Michigan, carried an artificial heart in his backpack for 17 months while he waited for a transplant. The 13-pound artificial heart used compressed air to pump blood through Stan’s body, letting him continue with life while he waited alongside 121,000 others on the organ transplant list.  Now that Stan has a new heart, he’s thankful for the technology that prolonged his life long enough for a donor to come along and save it.

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