I was born with a congenital heart defect, Transposition of the Great Arteries. My whole life I grew up thinking I was just a “heart kid.” Struggling to keep up with my friends. Struggling to breathe. I was in and out of hospitals, had many procedures, a lot of doctors appointments and a strict medicine regiment. I’ve known Erika since middle school. We became best friends and I asked her to be my girlfriend when she was 15. Four years later I asked her to marry me. On June 29th 2002 we got married. We were happy, in love, starting our careers and had a pretty normal life. Eventually we started our family; Emelyn Joy was born in February of 2011 and Keziah Marie was born almost 2 years later. About a month after our second daughter was born, I was hospitalized with severe heart failure. Emelyn was 2 and Keziah was just a baby. It was then that we were told the devastating news that there was nothing more they could do to keep me alive and that I was in need of a heart transplant. I’ll never forget being told this news. I was only 33. Erika was holding our newborn baby and I looked into Emelyn’s eyes as she smiled at me, completely oblivious to the fact that her and her sister may have to grow up without their daddy there. I started the rigorous evaluation process for transplant. During an MRI we found out more devastating news. The veins from my left lung were occluded to my heart, the doctors assumed this was since birth. And because of this, over time my right lung became diseased. I went from needing a heart transplant to a heart and double transplant in a matter of days. Heart and double lung transplants are extremely rare and very risky. But we felt that we had no choice. The medical team gave me less than a year to live if I did not receive new organs. We were terrified of this thought and all the what ifs. The hospitals in the area told us the risks were too great and they wouldn’t even attempt the surgery. We were rejected by many hospitals due to the risks and my survival rate being so low. We were so thankful when UPMC in Pittsburgh agreed to take a chance at saving my life. This however meant moving ourselves and our 2 little girls to Pittsburgh and leaving literally everything behind. We had no idea how long we would be there, where we would live, how we would support our family on no income, or the many trials that would come our way. We also had no guarantee that I would even survive this risky procedure. A month later we left everything behind except for clothes and supplies for our kids and moved to Pittsburgh. My health steadily declined and I was soon hospitalized. May 17 2014 I received the life saving gift of organ donation. I was in the hospital for 4 months. I had very rough recovery. Two days of after transplant I had a surgical bleed out causing me to go blind in my left eye. I needed an invasive surgery to correct the problem with only a 10% chance of survival. Miraculously I survived. About a week later the nurses wanted to move me from the bed to a chair to show Erika I was improving. When they stood me up I went into cardiac arrest. They grabbed Erika and carried her out of the ICU as everyone rushed to my bed. That’s when they found out I had a tear in my trachea. I once again survived but for the next 3 months I had multiple infections and my body was rejecting the new organs. My kidneys failed and I was put on continuous dialysis. My brain lacked so much oxygen that I was always hallucinating. I was intubated for so long that they had to put an oxygen tube directly into my neck. I spent over 3 months fighting for my life in that hospital. I had to learn how to walk, swallow, talk and breathe all over again. Erika attempted to care for me as best as she could. She was going through the worst time of her life, worrying about loosing me, trying to balance caring for our children and being at the hospital for me. She had no time to even think about caring for herself. She watched in the ICU as countless people died in beds next to me. We were surrounded by death daily. We watched as families came and went with their loved ones. We watched widows grieve over the loss of their spouses. We watched children hug their daddies and mommies goodbye for the last time. Erika was constantly living in fear, afraid that she would be the next grieving widow and my children would be the ones hugging their daddy a final good bye. Against all odds I survived and eventually left that hospital, and we moved back home to WI together, as a family of 4!! We were so happy to be going home but I was still struggling medically and we lived life with the understanding that everything could change for us in the blink of an eye. We had to fly back to Pittsburgh once a month because my body was rejecting the new organs. However, each time we went back to Pittsburgh we took the opportunity to offer hope and encouragement to others. We would visit medical staff and encouraged them to keep providing excellent care. We would sit with patients waiting for a transplant and offer hope to their families. We collected food and supplies and made blessing bags that we brought with us and handed out to the homeless people all around Pittsburgh. It gave us the opportunity to also sit with them and have them tell us their story and offer them some hope and encouragement. It was our way of giving back when we had nothing else to give. I am now almost 5 years post transplant!! For the first time in over 8 years I finally feel great!! I’m working full time and against all odds I’ve started working out and I recently completed my second Fight for Air Climb where I climbed 1,034 stairs! That’s 95 flights of stairs to the top of the US Bank building. I also ran my first 5k last year and plan to run 2 more this year. I'm so thankful that I get to enjoy life with Erika and our girls. I wish I could say our struggles are over. I wish I could say we will all live happily ever after. But the truth is, the average life expectancy post heart and lung transplant is 5 years. The doctors projected that I would need another transplant 4-7 years after my first one. I am currently taking 15 different medications and a total of 37 pills daily. One of those alone costs $2,500 a month and is not covered by insurance. I still have to travel back to Pittsburgh twice a year for check ups. I have blood work and testing done here monthly. The cost of my medical expenses and trips to Pittsburgh to receive proper care well exceeds $10,000 a year not including medications. Despite both of us working this is an expense that we can not cover on our own. Please consider donating and helping our family with medical expenses, bills and medications. W can’t thank you enough!