I wasn't afraid of dying,
I was afraid of not beating it,
it's kind of hard to explain.
I grew up on Grosse Ile, in Michigan.
Great place to grow up, just a overall great experience.
We were the prototypical kids, you know, just active,
always playing sports,
but health issues,
nothing.
In 2007,
I started having symptoms of shortness of breath
and chest pain, arm pain, fatigue, different symptoms.
I kept going to the doctor over and over and over.
It went undiagnosed for two years and,
a small tumor grew grew into basically
the size of a football inside my chest.
I had nine rounds of R-CHOP-21,
55 rounds of radiation for nine months of treatment
and the cancer was gone at that point.
I noticed that something was wrong, you know,
about two years after the cancer treatment.
I was just having fatigue,
I was having some shortness of breath again,
I was filling up with fluid,
I was gaining weight.
They put me in ICU and they basically said,
"Do you have your affairs in order?"
Told my wife, "Probably not going to make it."
And...
Well,
I made it.
And then, you know, I, had treatment for eight years,
took medication and different things
and finally the wheels fell off
and I couldn't do it anymore,
my body gave out, my heart gave out.
I was as bad as I could be without,
you know, being gone.
First doctor, I met with Dr. Selektor at Henry Ford,
and she basically told me,
"You're in really bad shape, we don't know what we can do.
There's a possibility we can give you an LVAD
but we don't know if you'll even make it
through the surgery."
They just explained that, you know,
it's a pump that's going to do the work for my heart,
and it could save my life.
They evaluated me and...
They went ahead with the surgery.
I think about my LVAD literally twice a day.
When I go to bed at night,
you unplug your batteries, you plug into a cord,
you sleep on the wall power.
Your batteries charged at night,
you've got multiple batteries.
The batteries last 18 to 20 hours
and you always carry an extra set.
You go to bed, you plug in, you get up,
you hook your batteries up, out my pants on, go to work.
It's nothing that prevents me from doing anything,
you're not inhibited.
I could run five, six miles a week,
I can work 70-80 hours a week.
I can,
I basically, like I said, I do whatever I want to do.
I don't let anything to slow me down.
When I got the LVAD it was listed
as just destination therapy.
They told me that I wasn't a candidate for transplant,
at that point, I had way too many other issues.
But then a year later after the LVAD,
I had an appointment with my cardiologist,
Dr. Selektor, and...
She...
So they want to change my status
and they want to make me a bridge to transplant.
They want to do a workup and...
Give me that chance.
I look at everyone with optimism.
I love everybody now.
It's so different than the way the average person feels.
And it was because of the way
I was treated at Henry Ford, I think.
People need to realize how good they are there.
It's an Oasis.
If, you know, if you want to live,
you really want to live, that's the place to go.
(uplifting music)