This Month’s Featured Article

Clambering off a year-long roller coaster of wires and tubes, hope and dread, progress and setbacks, Phil Trowbridge arrived home in Ghent, Columbia County, NY on April 1 with a brand new heart. 

A gentle giant with a baritone rasp and a twinkle in his eye, the fifth-generation Angus cattle rancher lost 60 pounds in the ordeal, but gained a renewed appreciation for his devoted family, skilled doctors, and nurses, and the miracle of organ donation. 

Accustomed to being “outdoors all day, every day,” Trowbridge never imagined he’d be cooped up in a hospital for 50 weeks while specialists combed the country for a Phil-sized, O-positive heart to transplant into his chest.

How it all started

It all began Saturday, April 19, 2025 – five days after his 69th birthday. “I was feeding cows and I just didn’t feel right,” Phil recalls. “I called my son and told him I was going to urgent care in Valatie. I got out of the truck and had a hard time getting across the parking lot. The receptionist must have seen me comin’ because, before I knew it, I was in an ambulance headed for Albany Med.”

It was congestive heart failure. “The EMT asked me if I could take a shock. I said sure,” Phil related. “They paddled me, and that’s the last thing I remembered for eight days. I was placed on a breathing machine and sedated. They later med-flighted me to Westchester Medical Center.”

Phil’s wife Annie – a registered nurse and former clinical coordinator at Columbia Memorial Hospital in Hudson – knew what questions to ask. But it was the doctors’ facial expressions that conveyed how tenuous the situation was. “For a month and a half, he was sick enough that it could have gone either way,” Annie confided.

Cardiologist Dr. Alan Gass and heart surgeon Dr. Junichi Shimamura determined Phil was transplant-eligible, and the family embraced that choice. Little did they know the path would be so precarious, or that the wait would stretch through Father’s Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

A savage grace

Phil was kept alive by a device known as an Impella, touted by its manufacturer as providing “temporary mechanical circulatory support, allowing the heart to rest and recover … by drawing blood from the left (or right) ventricle and expelling it into the aorta.” Or, as his daughter Amy simplified, “a saving grace machine that pumped his heart for him.” In fact, Phil set what was believed to be a global record of 277 days attached to an Impella.

His heart was not the only concern. Phil’s kidneys had shut down for lack of blood supply. Since Day One, he has undergone dialysis treatments two or three times a week. “At one point, I was on dialysis 24 hours a day for two weeks straight,” Phil shared. They don’t know yet whether he’ll need a kidney transplant.

Attended the Chatham Fair from his hospital bed

Labor Day weekend 2025 marked the first Columbia County Fair that Phil had ever missed. But his faithful following of 4-Hers used a smart phone to enable him, from his hospital bed, to remotely witness the calf sale, cattle judging, and other agricultural exhibits that he had always enjoyed.

It was Phil, as a long-time board member of the Columbia County Agricultural Society, who 15 years ago hatched the idea of replacing the century-old livestock barns in the “ag corner” of the Chatham fairgrounds – not just improved space for farm animals, but also a distinctive venue for agricultural education. 

Phil credits the fair’s general manager, Eric Barnes, and project manager, Brian Lossow, with working tirelessly to give life to his dream. Drawings are complete, fund-raising is under way, and the Ag Society plans to break ground this September. The project committee cleverly named it the Columbia Agricultural Learning Facility – “CALF” for short.

What real family looks like

Phil Trowbridge was born in Corfu, NY into an Angus cattle breeding family. He came to Columbia County as a herdsman for Gallagher’s Angus Farm in Ghent in May 1976 – one day after graduating from Alfred State College, where he and Annie had met (they wed the following March).

Their daughter Amy Alix is an operating room nurse at the Albany Bone & Joint Center. Amy, her husband Michael, and their children Taylor and Tucker live in East Greenbush. Phil and Annie’s son PJ; his wife Miranda; and their daughters Daisy, Lily, Rosie, and Violet live next to the farm.

Throughout Phil’s hospitalization, family and friends showered him with caring. Annie and/or Amy were bedside virtually every day, with help from Phil’s daughter-in-law Miranda, brother Patrick, and friend Laura Aloisio. Grandkids joined in on weekends and holidays. Acquaintances visited from as far away as Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Oregon.

“It was inspiring how they all came together, there by his side every single day, never complaining,” said Aloisio, a graphic designer from Stephentown. “That is love like I have never seen. That is real family.”

“Changing his routine and perspective to endure all the pokes and prods, day and night, never getting fresh air, and seldom seeing daylight, was a feat in itself,” she continued. “How Phil kept his composure and stayed hopeful was a testament to his strength on a whole different level.”

Son PJ has been an unsung hero, bearing the weight of managing Trowbridge Angus Farm’s 300-head cattle herd and 1,200 acres without his dad available to share the load. PJ and herdsman Logan Ransford have toiled sunup to sundown to maintain the farm and pull off its two major annual events – the bull sale in May and the female sale in September.

The transplant journey

At last, on October 28, 2025 – Day 193, according to Amy’s detailed journal – the doctors found a heart. As Phil waited on the operating table, bad news arrived. The transplant was canceled because the potential donor did not pass away within the 30-minute harvest window following withdrawal of life support. “Heartbroken, sure, but thankful and appreciative? Absolutely,” wrote Amy.

A second attempt, on January 24, 2026, yielded further disappointment. Just before the scheduled harvest, the potential donor experienced a cardiac event, leaving the heart no longer viable for transplant. Such are the harsh realities of organ procurement.

The nationwide United Network for Organ Sharing uses a seven-step hierarchy for ranking the need of transplant candidates. Until now, Phil had been Status 2 – “urgent but not emergent,” Annie says. But after the second setback, Dr. Gass, citing Phil’s protracted wait and deteriorating heart perfusion numbers, convinced UNOS to elevate him to Status 1 – top priority. 

It worked. On January 27, Annie was getting in her car at 7am for the daily journey to Westchester when her phone rang. “Annie,” she recalls Dr. Gass declaring, “we think we’ve found the perfect heart.”

Ten hours later, an emotionally jumbled scene of anticipation, anxiety, and hope swirled around Phil’s bedside. As he wheeled toward the surgical suite, with Annie and Amy alongside, staff of the CCU lined the hallway – clapping, waving, and weeping. His own eyes swollen with tears of gratitude, Phil turned a corner and received more applause from the cardiothoracic unit team.

The third time, as they say, was the charm.

Finally arriving home two months later – greeted by lights and sirens from two Columbia County sheriff’s patrols, balloons tied to fence posts, and cheering family, friends, and neighbors – was a major milestone. 

But Phil’s recovery is just beginning. Dialysis three times a week in Kingston. Intensive cardio rehab in Albany. Follow-ups with specialists in Westchester. Periodic biopsies to detect any inkling of organ rejection. This is going to take a while.

Annie hopes sharing Phil’s story will encourage organ donation. When her 16-year-old granddaughter Taylor – Amy’s daughter – recently got her driver’s license, she checked the organ donor box as a tribute to Grampa.

“It’s been quite an experience,” Phil says. “I don’t recommend this kind of vacation for everybody, but this is the better option of the two.” •

To learn how to become an organ donor, visit organdonor.gov.

Jim Calvin is a former managing editor of the Hudson Register-Star and principal of Calvin Communications.