It just may have been the most ordinary, extraordinary call on the planet, the recipient laughed.
“Your heart is ready.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What time do I need to be there?”
“Within the hour.”
And that’s how Nark “K.D.” Kumaravelan made medical history in Morgantown two months ago.
He woke up in J.W. Ruby Memorial Hospital with a new heart and kidney after a nearly 10-hour procedure.
The landmark surgery was the first-ever at the hospital in Morgantown.
And, as reported by his many friends and customers who frequent his TK’s Produce and Bubble Tea restaurant on Walnut Street, it also carried a bit of irony.
That’s because the guy they say who has the biggest heart around — was also in possession of one that was simply giving out.
A heart attack a couple of years ago opened the gate. Surgery wasn’t effective, and the stents didn’t last.
He couldn’t work the counter or the kitchen of the popular vegetarian and vegan restaurant he owns and operates with his wife, Saracha.
Simply walking across the living room, even, left him hopelessly winded.
At just 48 years of age, he was dying.
Chronic heart disease. Another irony, as he’s a vegetarian.
“They told me I needed a heart transplant, which I was opposed to at first,” he said. “I wanted to try other means to treat it.”
He even considered high-tech laser surgery at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, but he was running out of time.
After the surgery and his turn as the subject of newspaper and television accounts, those aforementioned friends turned their hearts to him.
K.D. and Saracha aren’t just marital partners — they’re business ones, also.
A heart transplant isn’t exactly an outpatient procedure.
They had to close the restaurant while Kumaravelan works to regain his strength.
They have a son, Thunva, who is 8.
When the couple opened their restaurant, Maura McLaughlin thanked her lucky stars.
The WVU professor of physics and astronomy has been a vegan for 30 years, half of which have been spent professionally in Morgantown, where, menu-wise, as said, one can’t always get there from here.
After all, this is the place where sausage gravy can be hailed as the elixir of Almost Heaven.
This is the place where it’s sometimes just not a meal — unless it arrives batter-fried, in a cardboard carton with grease tattoos.
It didn’t take long for TK’s to become her favorite place.
Nor did it take long for K.D. and Saracha to become her favorite proprietors.
“They are just the kindest, most generous people,” she told The Dominion Post this past Christmas Eve. “They’re genuine.”
So she launched a GoFundMe effort online.
And people contributed.
Boy, did they ever, the restauranter said.
The outpouring made his new heart swell, he said.
“I couldn’t get over it,” he said. “I couldn’t get over the kindness.”
What he can get over, he said, is a dual heart and kidney transplant. He’s making strides every day.
So much so that he and Saracha are shooting for a March reopening.
“I’m going to try,” he said.
In the meantime, he’s going to keep thanking his GoFundMe benefactors, and, of course, the organ donors who made his new chapter possible.
He’s going to (continue to) appreciate the blessings of his life in the Mountain State, so far away from his native Malaysia.
West Virginia, in fact, was the first place he landed, as a 15-year-old.
He flew over to take classes at New Vrindaban, the Hare Krishna community in Marshall County known for its famed Palace of Gold.
Humanitarian work in Chicago and New York City followed, but the place hosting a range of ancient mountains called him home.
“This place is home,” he said. “It’s family. I’m grateful.”
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