Army Reservist still pedaling his bike and serving his country after heart transplant

As a professional soldier, John Fairbanks wasn't about to let what he calls "a medical procedure" end his Army career.

But his superior officers told the 38-year-old sergeant that the procedure _ a heart transplant _ precluded him from service.

Now, nearly two years after the surgery, Fairbanks' fight to save his life and his job has paid off: he's been given a clean bill of health and a post in the Army Reserves.

"Just like pedaling in the wind, you put your head down and pedal harder," said Fairbanks, who was finishing a bicycle race when he suffered the heart attack that eventually led to the transplant.

His doctors are amazed at his recovery, which they attribute to his military regimen of physical fitness before the heart attack.

"Sgt. Fairbanks represents the commitment to protect human life by continuing to serve his nation in uniform," said Army spokeswoman Maj. Anne Edgecomb. "He also represents all soldiers by living the warrior ethos, 'I will not accept defeat. I will not quit.'"

Ten soldiers have received heart transplants in the past seven years, but only one remains on active duty service, she said.

Fairbank's ordeal began when he started feeling dizzy on April 2, 2005, while approaching the final hill of a 50-mile race in the Kansas Flint Hills. He coasted to the finish, but the tightness in his chest didn't go away.

During the 1 1/2-hour drive home to Hutchinson, he didn't feel any better. So he went to a local hospital, where doctors determined he was having a massive heart attack. The left side of his heart had been without blood for several hours. He needed emergency bypass surgery.

The surgery didn't produce the desired results, so Fairbanks went to see Dr. Hussam Farhoud in Wichita, who was amazed Fairbanks was still alive.

"He had no warning whatsoever that he was having a heart attack," Farhoud said. "When he came to see me, he said, 'I want you to do something because I can't live like this. I'm young and I have a young family.' He was in tears."

Fairbanks, a father of two, was sent to LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City, where he received the heart of a 19-year-old from Montana two weeks later.

"I felt better instantaneously. I guess I didn't know how sick I was, because you're in denial and you don't notice it too much because it's you," he said.

A few weeks later, he was back on his bicycle.

Still, doctors at Fort Riley who evaluated Fairbanks three months after his transplant said the medications he was taking to keep his body from rejecting the new heart would prevent him from doing his job.

Fairbanks asked the Army for time to recuperate. He argued that because he's a career counselor, he was unlikely to be sent to Iraq or Afghanistan.

But the Army told him in the summer of 2006 to pick a date for retirement. He chose Oct. 15 to give him time to make one last appeal.

"How do you wake up and say I'm not going to be a soldier, just because I had a medical procedure?"

He asked the Army to evaluate him again and submitted more documentation, including eight medals he won at the U.S. Transplant Games in Louisville, Ky., in basketball, cycling and swimming.

On Oct. 15, Fairbanks went to Fort Riley expecting to retire. Instead, he was told his appeal had been granted.

"The same thing that drives me now is what drove me before. I want to be all I can be, or `Army strong,' I guess now is the phrase," Fairbanks said, referring to the Army's new recruiting slogan.

When he advises soldiers about their military careers, he stresses the importance of the Army's medical benefits _ despite recent disclosures of shoddy outpatient treatment and bureaucratic red tape at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He also urges them to sign organ donor cards.

Earlier this month, Fairbanks entered the same race where he had his heart attack.

"On that last hill, I was thinking about it. I got all choked up. I had to compose myself because they were all waiting for me at the finish," he said. "I actually beat some people. I told them I didn't know whether to feel good for me or bad for them."

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