Young at heart

THIS month, Harold "Curly" Kinsley celebrates two birthdays. On March 18 he was 61, but it is the second and more unusual birthday that makes him truly young at heart.

He is now the fourth longest surviving heart transplant patient in the country, the longest in Hampshire, and March 1 marked 22 years since his life-saving operation.

At the time of his operation, at Papworth Hospital in Cambridgeshire, the life expectancy of heart transplant patients was five years.

"I have been very lucky," Mr Kinsley said.

"I have taken care of myself but luck does come into it. I feel fine, I'm still fighting fit and, other than a bad back, I'm as good as anybody else."

There had been no hint of a heart defect before he suffered agonising chest pains while clearing snow and ice at his Winchester home.

He collapsed at a bus stop and was rushed to hospital for the six-hour operation. His new heart came from a 22-year-old Londoner killed in a car crash.

Since his operation, Mr Kinsley has lived life to the full, running the London Marathon twice and the Winchester ten-mile road race to raise money for Papworth and the British Heart Foundation.He also competed in the Transplant Games, a sporting tournament for transplant patients, for 19 years.

"The games is to prove to people just because we've had transplants doesn't make us unfit or less fit than people who haven't had a transplant," said Mr Kinsley, of Fromond Road, Weeke.

Having survived such a massive operation inevitably changes your outlook, he said.

"It's got to change your attitude - if it didn't I don't think you'd be human. When I first got done I didn't take anything for granted. But the longer you live with a transplant you get so used to doing things it doesn't matter any more.

"For the last 22 years I have been carrying on as normal - it's about living. I still have a drink and that will never change! And having two sons and three grandchildren has kept my heart going."