Murphey Coy was warm. He folded his fingers into loose fists, feeling their heat. His hands and feet had been cold for more than two years, but when he woke up from his heart transplant surgery on March 7, he was finally warm.

“I was so excited,” Coy said. “I had forgotten what it felt like to be warm. I just remember turning to my mom and saying, ‘Feel me, I’m so warm.’ ”

A month later, Coy, 20, sat in the living room of his apartment playing with his new puppy. It was April 7 and he was home from the hospital. Usually, Coy said, patients are in the hospital between 11 and 24 weeks.

“Tonight at 11:58, it will be one month exactly since my new heart started beating in my chest,” he said. “I’ve never felt healthier. I’ve just never felt better.”Three days after his heart transplant, Coy got out of bed and started walking around. In eight days, he was released from the hospital. He credits his youth and his overall general good heath for helping him recover so quickly, but his surgeon at the UK Gill Heart Institute, Dr. Mark Bonnell, said it was something more than that.

“I’ve never met anyone with a more positive attitude and outlook on life,” Bonnell said.

‘Something just wasn’t right’

In May 2007, Coy collapsed on the field while playing lacrosse during his senior year in high school in Toledo, Ohio. He was diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy and congestive heart failure. The cardiomyopathy caused his heart to weaken and enlarge and it couldn’t pump blood through his body efficiently. Of all of the types of the condition, Coy said his was most common.

Coy, who had signed to play lacrosse at Virginia Military Institute after high school, began searching for a new college. Like other students, he toured college campuses looking for the right academic program and student life. But also, Coy was looking at disability resource programs and heart departments at campus hospitals.

For Coy, UK’s Gill Heart Institute and the people he met on campus made him fall in love with school.

“I met Dr. Bonnell and I just knew this was where I was supposed to be,” Coy said.

For about a year and a half, doctors continued to monitor him, but Coy’s condition remained stable. Then in

November 2008, he started having health problems. By January he was in and out of the hospital every couple of weeks and began dropping some of his classes. He and his doctors began talking seriously about the possibility of a heart transplant.

“I have type O blood which is one of the more competitive organ markets,” Coy said. “We knew this was going to be a possibility that I would need a transplant but we were looking at a while before it was a reality.”

But by February, Coy had dropped his course load to two classes and had decided on having the transplant done at UK. He said he felt comfortable with Bonnell and had full faith in the surgical team.

When Coy checked into the hospital on March 4, Bonnell told him he wouldn’t be checking back out; he needed a new heart.

“I had a really good week, I’d been feeling great for about five days but when I woke up on Wednesday morning (March 4), it was weird. I didn’t feel bad, but something just wasn’t right.”

On March 6, Coy’s name officially went on the waiting list for a heart.

Coy said it could be a miracle or maybe just luck that got him a heart so fast. Either way, Bonnell told him he’d probably be on the waiting list for six to eight weeks and in 24 hours, Coy had two offers for a heart.

“It was a really good blessing,” Coy said. “The donor was my age and my size, surgery went perfect. I just don’t think any of it could have gone any better.”

‘On cloud nine’

Coy calls his heart his gift — something he said he now wants to live his life in honor and in gratification of.

“I’ve always been a happy person, but since my surgery I’ve just been on cloud nine,” he said. “I can’t do it justice with words how I feel.”

To celebrate his new heart and his second chance at life, and to help raise money for what he calls a “very worthy cause,” Coy is teaming up with members of his fraternity, Phi Gamma Delta, and other friends and family members to raise money for the American Heart Association’s Heart Walk.

“Not many of the brothers could visit Murphey in the hospital because he was in the Intensive Care Unit,” said management and Spanish sophomore Colin Dempsey, a fraternity brother of Coy’s. “We were looking for a way to support him while he recovers.”

So far, the fraternity has raised more than $5,500 through donations and T-shirt sales and Dempsey said they will have more than $6,000 by the day of the walk, April 25.

“Murphey has always been a fighter. There were 40 people in the waiting room of the hospital when he woke up. I think that was a huge part of his recovery,” Dempsey said. “Everyone who knows him has been inspired by Murphey and this is our way to show that.”

Taylor Moore, a member of Kappa Alpha Theta, designed buckets that read, “a change of heart,” and Coy delivered them to sorority houses on campus to collect extra change to donate to the heart walk.

Coy said he is walking every day to prepare for next week’s heart walk. He has an elliptical exercise machine in his apartment and he walks at the Arboretum.

“It was Dr. Bonnell who brought this idea to me,” Coy said. “And I can’t think of a better way to give back.”

Since his surgery, Coy has undergone four biopsies, a procedure where doctors put a catheter into the heart to check for elements of the body’s rejection of the organ. He has showed no signs of rejection.

Right now, he still requires 24-hour care, which his parents take turns providing. When he goes outside or goes to class — the entomology sophomore is still enrolled in and regularly going to one class — he has to wear a mask over his face to protect him from bacteria.

He will have to wear that mask for the rest of his life when he visits a doctor’s office or goes to the hospital but he hopes by the summer he will no longer have to wear it when he goes outside.

When he first became sick, Coy said his dad gave him a banner that read, ‘Life is good.’

“At first I didn’t care for it,” Coy said. “I felt like it wasn’t the right time for that kind of message. But after my surgery I’ve come around to it.

“Life is good, you know? It’s kind of my motto.”

Murphey Coy’s Donation Page