‘Spin Skater’ in EMMC suffering heart failure Maine man denied place on transplant list

BANGOR – Joshua Barker, 24, the “Spin Skater” of Pinpoint Pond in Trescott, was airlifted from Machias on Thursday to Eastern Maine Medical Center in heart failure. Just a week earlier, Barker was denied a place on a transplant list at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

It was the second denial for Barker and, short of a miracle, he likely will not recover from the damage his heart has suffered.

Barker remains in the critical care unit at EMMC suffering from the effects of cardiomyopathy, an enlargement of his heart.

Talking with difficulty this weekend, his mother, Brenda Gay-Barker, vowed, “I have not given up hope.”

But Gay-Barker knows the transplant was her son’s last chance.

“They decided not to put him on the list for a variety of complicated reasons,” she said. “But we can still hope and pray.”

After a stay in Boston earlier this month, Barker came home to Whiting for a brief 24 hours. His condition deteriorated and he was airlifted from Down East Community Hospital in Machias to Bangor on Thursday.

“I don’t even know what to say to you,” Gay-Barker said, choking up. “He is very, very sick.”

Joshua Barker was introduced to Bangor Daily News readers in January as the Spin Skater of Pinpoint Pond, the young man from Trescott who prompted a children’s story about perseverance and courage.

As a teenager, Barker wanted nothing more than to be an Olympic skater. His spinning and skating on a small pond in front of his family’s home caught the eye and the imagination of Linda Godfrey of Eastport, who wrote a moving children’s story about a skater and his determination to become the very best despite difficult circumstances.

But the freckle-faced young man with a huge smile was derailed from his dreams when he was diagnosed at age 19 with cardiomyopathy. He had to stop skating and leave college. Barker managed his illness for several years with medication.

In Barker’s case, the heart muscle fibers pressed tighter and tighter against one another, trying to create a stronger contraction as the heart began to fail. As the heart worked harder, the muscles grew in size.

In February 2006, Barker suffered a major heart attack. A defibrillator and a pacemaker were implanted in his chest and he began pursuing the opportunity to get on a heart transplant list.

The first hospital that he dealt with refused him. Thinking his options for medical intervention were used up, Barker moved into an assisted-living facility in Bangor and began slowly moving through his days, preparing to die. His condition worsened and he began retaining up to 30 pounds of extra fluid.

But the young man was given a second chance when the BWH transplant team called and offered him the opportunity to be re-evaluated.

“Before the party in Eastport, I had been wondering about possibly just giving up,” Barker said earlier this year after a day of evaluations at Maine Medical Center in Portland. “I felt really, really alone going into all of this. The doctors made me feel like I wasn’t good enough for a heart.” In tears after the exhausting day of medical tests, Barker admitted to the difficulty of the situation.

“I’m exhausted and frustrated,” he said. “Everything seems so out of my control.”

Touching his chest, Barker said “It’s hard to think of someone else’s heart in here.”

Gay-Barker said her son appreciates the support shown to him by the people of Maine. “He loves all the cards especially,” she said. “When he isn’t strong enough, I open them for him and read them to him.”