Point Pleasant 'decoy king' gets his life back with new heart technology

POINT PLEASANT - Arthur "Artie" Birdsall's life is devoted to carving duck decoys, a tradition that goes back generations in his family and a vocation to which he has committed 50 years of his life.

But Birdsall's carving days nearly came to an end when heart failure left him struggling to breathe and robbed him of his ability to carve the wooden birds, which are used in duck hunting and are collectible pieces of art.

With the help of a team of heart doctors, new cardiac technologies and state-of-the-art surgery techniques, the 73-year-old Point Pleasant resident is getting his life back as well as his chance to start carving again.

Birdsall, a fourth-generation decoy carver, is well-known in the decoy collector community. He is also a staple of Point Pleasant, where his family settled generations earlier and where he is regarded as a local historian, said his cousin Evelyn Regan of Point Pleasant.

"He's a fixture, and he's a character and everybody in town knows him," she said.

Birdsall was also known to judge decoys and run his own table at the Barnegat Bay Duck and Decoy Show, an annual event that attracted thousands of visitors and tourists to southern Ocean County. See a photo gallery of the most recent show at the top of this story.

Birdsall said he discovered his life's passion when he went to carve decoys for his uncle Charlie Birdsall in 1971. The elder Birdsall was on target to make Point Pleasant the duck decoy capital of the United States, according to a 1961 article in the Asbury Park Press.

For young Artie, the sanding and the woodworking came naturally. He loved the people he met in the business, Birdsall recalled.

"(Decoy carving) was it. That was my home run. That was my number 10," Birdsall recalled. "It wasn't a job. It was fun."

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Out of breath

The first signs that something was wrong with Birdsall's heart came years ago when he was pulling a sled of decoys through the snow on a hunting trip with a friend.

"I remember getting winded," Birdsall recalled, saying that his hunting partner then took the sled and set up the decoys as he caught his breath.

Over time, he found his condition deteriorating.

"I started taking breaks," said Birdsall. Before long, "I couldn't breathe. I'd be sitting in a chair with my feet up, gasping for air."

The breathlessness was so severe that Birdsall said he had to stop working in his wood shop on the decoys.

Medical tests soon revealed that Birdsall was suffering from end-stage heart failure.

Due to a shortage of hearts available for transplant, Dr. Jesus Almendral and Dr. Deepak Singh at Jersey Shore University Medical Center implanted a left ventricular assist device, or LVAD, in Birdsall's chest. The device works to pump blood from the left ventricle of his heart to the rest of the body.

"There's over 6 million people with heart failure in the United States, and about 5% of those people end up with end-stage heart failure, which is what Mr. Birdsall had," said Almendral, a heart failure and transplant expert who is on Birdsall's team of cardiac care doctors.

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Ideally, this kind of end-stage heart failure would result in a heart transplant; however, "there's (only) so many hearts that go around and a lot of people have comorbidity, or sometimes they're over age and they don't qualify for a heart transplant," Almendral said.

Luckily for Birdsall, the left ventricular assist device has advanced in recent years and is now nearly as good as a heart transplant, said Singh, a heart surgeon at Jersey Shore University Medical Center who helped insert Birdsall's device.

"As things have gotten safer and safer, the (heart) donor pool has marginally got smaller and smaller," said Singh. "So there's a lot of patients waiting around for the better advanced therapies and these new devices. The exciting thing is that they're smaller, and there are less complications … and they're lasting better."

Regan, Birdsall's cousin, said the implanted device connects through tubes in his abdomen to battery packs he wear like a holster. To leave the house, Birdsall carries a bag of spare batteries with him, she said.

For about a year and a half after the implantation of the ventricular device, Birdsall was feeling well, but the shortness of breath returned last year, his doctors said.

"I couldn't go down the driveway to get my mail," Birdsall recalled. "That was the sign. It got worse and worse."

His team of doctors discovered a leak in one of Birdsall's heart valves.

"As soon as the (ventricular device) pump would pump blood into his aorta, it would go back into his ventricle. So it (blood) just keep spinning there, like it (the heart) is spinning its wheels," Singh said.

Birdsall was not a good candidate for a third open heart surgery, according to his cardiac team.

Instead, Singh and Dr. Matthew Saybolt, director of Jersey Shore University Medical Center’s Structural Heart Disease Program, performed a transcatheter aortic valve replacement, or TAVR procedure. The new procedure is less invasive — implanted through a small incision at the groin — compared to traditional open heart surgery.

Singh said valve replacement technology represents a "paradigm shift" in heart surgery and allows some patients to leave the hospital the next day.

"You get the immediate benefits without any setback of surgery," Singh said.

Since his last surgery, Birdsall has returned home and is recovering.

“I’m a survivor," he said. "The doctors, they did so much for me. Because of them, I’m a success."

Almendral, the doctor who helped to implant Birdsall's ventricular device, said he wants to see his patient return to carving decoys.

"We'll do all this for you," Almendral recalled telling Birdsall. "But I want you to go back to doing what you love."

Birdsall said he is not yet back in his wood working shop, but he plans to start carving in the near future as his recovery progresses. He continues to appraise and consign decoys for others, Regan said.

To help, his friends launched a GoFundMe page to cover some medical bills not covered by his insurance. To donate, visit: https://www.gofundme.com/f/art-birdsall-lovelandtown039s-decoy-king.

Amanda Oglesby is an Ocean County native who covers Brick, Barnegat and Lacey townships as well as the environment. She has worked for the Press for more than a decade. Reach her at @OglesbyAPP, aoglesby@gannettnj.com or 732-557-5701.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Point Pleasant 'decoy king' gets state-of-the-art heart surgery