Leigh: From surgery at 6 to donor for life

From open heart surgery at six to lifelong support

Leigh Blashki is one of the Heart Foundation’s committed donors. In fact, he has been giving a monthly donation for more than three decades.

Recently he increased that regular amount, something he endeavours to do year-on-year. He has a personal knowledge of the value of the organisation’s fight for heart health.

The Heart Foundation does wonderful work, and the organisation has a great reputation around the world, which I think is marvelous.

Leigh Blashki

Heart surgery survivor and donor

A pioneering surgery in 1959

Leigh had open heart surgery at the age of six in November 1959. Back then, the operation was something very new to Australia. The machinery designed to keep patients alive while they were being operated on was also something quite innovative.

In lieu of the kind of heart-lung machine used in other parts of the world, Australia had its own version, built using materials collected from Melbourne food and beverage factories. The machine was constructed in just 10 days and moved from state to state, depending on who was scheduled to be operated on. “My parents had to wait for three years for the operation to happen. Essentially, I needed a surgery that wasn’t available,” Leigh explained.

A life-saving heart operation for atrial septal defect

“Ostensibly, the procedure was to fix an atrial septal defect (ASD), a hole between the left and right upper chambers of the heart. But there was another murmur there, which turned out to be problem with a valve. I had an extremely narrowed, or stenosed, pulmonary valve.

“I wouldn’t have lived to teenagerhood if I hadn’t had that part of the operation done.”

As it happened, surgeons wouldn’t fix the ASD until 1991, when Leigh was 38. The hole, though, had only gotten bigger. Because of the delay in the procedure, he has also ended up with a “moderately dilated right side of the heart”.

From patient to passionate donor to the Heart Foundation

His second operation would lead him to become a regular donor to the Heart Foundation and a volunteer for a Melbourne-based hospital program where people who’d had heart surgery, visited those who were either recovering from or about to face it.

Managing arrhythmia with support and resilience

In 2016 and 2017, Leigh started to experience an irregular heartbeat or arrythmia (a fault in the heart’s electrical system, which affects its pumping rhythm). The abnormal electrical activity makes the heart muscle beat too fast, slow or in an irregular way.

At the end of 2017 he had the first of two ablations, a procedure designed to deactivate the area of the heart where the abnormal electrical signals are coming from.

Supporting mental wellbeing while living with heart conditions

While he still experiences arrythmia, Leigh says it is something he has learned to live with through “good mental health management” medicines and regular checkups with his cardiologist.

The founder of the Australian Institute of Yoga knows the dangers of stress. In his 70s, Leigh is cognisant too that he has among the oldest surviving patients of open-heart surgery from the 1950s.

“My heart’s had a lot of scarring and a lot of stress – and eventually it’ll tell me it’s had enough. Hopefully that’s not for a few more years,” he said.