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The 49-year-old father of two from Manalapan, got the news in August 2021 that doctors found a donor heart.
He said he knew it was fate. He had been admitted to the hospital for more than 50 days, waiting for a transplant, while his own father lost a battle to cancer.
During Savalia’s time in the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital’s Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit (CVICU), his father had a serious fall while he was undergoing cancer treatment and was in critical condition at the hospital. The care team made special arrangements so Savalia could safely visit him before he passed.
His father died on Aug. 12. Savalia's heart transplant was on Aug. 18, so he was unable to attend his father's funeral. "I could not leave the hospital,'' he said.
“Losing my father was very difficult, but I feel that he went up there (to heaven) for me to make sure there was a heart for me,” Savalia recalls.
The grief was overwhelming, but Savalia said he was determined to survive so he could be there for his wife and two teenage children.
Savalia always led a healthy lifestyle, regularly taking fitness classes three times a week and watching his diet. Although he never previously had any heart health issues, following a vigorous cardio boot camp class in June 2018, he felt shortness of breath that wouldn’t go away.
Closer to his surgery "basic walking around would give me shortness of breath."
He walked 15-20 laps around the CVICU each day with a nurse to stay as healthy as he could as he waited for a suitable heart.
After 43 days in the hospital, Savalia received life-changing news: a donor heart had been found. Dr. Hirohisa Ikegami, surgical director of the Heart Transplant Program, successfully performed the transplant.
Savalia hasn’t returned to classes at the gym yet, but he logs 10,000 steps every day. He walks as much as five miles a day.
He looks forward to traveling again with his wife and teenage children – just one of the things they did as a family that was put on hold while he waited for his lifesaving transplant.
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