It was a complete accident. I’d never shown any of the typical symptoms of heart failure previously, but as I lay on the gurney in the cardiologist’s office in Novi Sad, Serbia, the casual tone the doctor used made what she found seem like much less of a big deal than what it would eventually become. “It looks like your left ventricle is enlarged, and you have a low ejection fraction of 35%, less than a normal person. You should find a good cardiologist, but you’ll be taking pills for the rest of your life.” I’d ended up there because my personal trainer had requested a full body check-up before I started working with him. The only noticeable symptom I had at the time was an elevated heart rate when we measured it during workouts. I just thought it was because I was fat and hauling more weight.
So I ended up connected with the best cardiologist my mom could find and just kept on living. We never saw any significant improvement or change until my doctor ecommended I try Entresto in 2019. This was a notoriously difficult drug to obtain in Serbia, so once we got some from Russia through a friend of the family, I just kept doing my usual thing. It started small, a cough that just kept popping up during the day occasionally. We never thought anything of it because, in all honesty, we weren’t told to watch for that as a possible symptom. But then the big baddies started stepping in. First, it was digestive issues. I was so sure I had a nasty stomach bug I couldn’t beat. Then fatigue stepped in. I had a photoshoot planned to photograph a good friend of mine being proposed to. I barely managed the walk 500 m to the nearby cafe where we were meeting. I thought this was all digestive, but I figured we should check out the heart again, just in case. I arrived at my urgently booked appointment and lay on the gurney and heard these words for the first time: “You need to go to hospital. Now.” My EF had dropped to 18%.
So I listened and I went. I was remarkably normal. I just didn’t have stamina, and eating sucked. The doctors tested me for everything, trying to figure out where my cardiomyopathy had come from. They didn’t find anything. The team there pulled me off Entresto, stabilized me, got me on different medications, pulled my EF back to 25%, then told me to get back to Canada. That’s because Serbia barely has any kind of transplant system in place. They stuck an ICD in my chest to help me get back to Canada. The surgeon told me his friend had been on an LVAD for 12 years waiting for a heart. So, back to Canada I came, arriving just as COVID started flipping the world upside down in 2020.
Life continued on fairly regularly. Just another guy with a cardiologist and regular pills to take, no biggie. Last year in late spring, my heart started to tank again. I was in the middle of a difficult time at home and at work, and I ended up with a dry cough and stomach issues again. I requested an echocardiogram, and on a Sunday at 1 p.m. I got a phone call from an alarmed-sounding doctor again telling me, “You need to go to hospital. Now.” So I went, and they patched me up the best they could during my one-week stay, and I ended up back in the hospital less than a month later, my heart in even worse condition, on November 17th. I was a candidate for an LVAD until I suddenly no longer was and ended up on what I describe as “EKMO Lite,” also known to me as an Impella 5.5 device. A whole bunch of surgical complications later, a
heart was found, and my old heart went in pieces to its new home in a bucket suite in the basement of St. Paul’s, and my new heart moved in on December 2nd, 2025.
Life’s been interesting since then. I’ll ease your concerns and immediately clarify that medically everything has been going swimmingly. I’m recovering really well, and I honestly feel as good as I did when I was just living my regular life with my old heart, specifically those years when it wasn’t on the edge of complete failure. I’ll also admit that I’m deeply lucky and grateful that my own experiences going through all of this haven’t scarred me mentally, as I’ve heard my fellow heart transplant patients have been. Life’s returning to normal again. I’m able to do and take for granted all those things I used to do again. I can drink a glass of ice water without feeling guilty.
I can climb hills, photograph, fly kites, function for a full workday at a desk, eat, breathe normally, see my friends, send letters, write a book for my nephew, journal.
But the thing is that all of that is because another person and the people who loved that person all suffered. A part of them now lives inside of me, and I live as a result. I don’t know anything substantial about them. I don’t know what made them laugh, what music they loved, or what they dreamed about. But I do know that I and my family are deeply grateful for this gift of my second life. I truly wish I knew more about my donor. I want to make my body as comfortable as possible for their heart. Even if I never find out who they were, I’ll spend the rest of my life doing my best to be a good home for the gift they left behind before Death and I dance again. One of my favourite songs is Baz Luhrmann’s song “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen),” In it, he says, “The race is long and in the end, it’s only with yourself.” The thing is that I’m no longer alone. Every beat of my heart reminds me of that.
I feel a bit impatient, not being able to write out all my greatest achievements since I got this gift. But as everyone keeps reminding me, I only started my second life seven months ago. I have a lot of life left to live! So with this new incredible gift and zeal, I hope to write here again in the future with an update and let you know all the good my heart and I have done.
