At age 60 years old, with his heart functioning below 10%, Derek walked himself into the operating room for a heart transplant. That’s not typical for someone who needs a heart transplant. But Derek is not typical.
Derek has run all his life. He’s logged 114 marathons and hundreds of other races. He is always running toward a finish line, giving it all he has.
In fact, Derek’s all-in spirit shined brightly just a few months after his transplant, that’s when Derek finished a race several miles longer than a marathon. “Heart transplant to 50K in 258 days,” Derek exclaims.
“It went well! I kept it slower and kept my heart rate under 135,” he says. “I finished strong.” Derek is already looking to his next race. Ultimately, he wants to be the first person with a heart transplant who qualifies to race the Boston Marathon.
While unusual, Derek’s story also tells a larger tale: the amazingly positive impact that organ donation and transplantation can have for people and those who love them—along with the wonderful things people with organ transplants can go on to do.
For Derek, life is a “crazy journey” and one worth living, fully embracing its roughest roads and highest peaks. “This is just part of my journey,” he says of his heart transplant and his recovery.
A few years before Derek’s heart transplant, his running career hit the proverbial marathon runner’s wall. While racing the New York City Marathon, he says, “I completely fell apart physically.” That was the first sign that there was a problem. But Derek ignored it and pushed on. A few months later, he ran the Boston Marathon and finished, adding, “It was just miserable.”
Derek chalked it up to getting older. He did what elite athletes do, he pushed on. “I just want to race. I just want to compete. That’s how I’m wired. I see a race I think I could do, and I’m signing up.”
But a few years later, during an epic competition that included long-distance running and mountain biking extreme distances, Derek was pulled off the course.
“I got like 80 miles into a 100-mile mountain bike race, and I had a little stroke, and they pulled me off the course, and that was the end of it,” he says.
He found out that his heart function was in the 20% range—which put him at risk of a heart attack and other problems. He says, “Who knows how long I was running with heart failure?”
Because Derek could continue to function and get around reasonably well even with such low heart function, he was not eligible to go on the transplant waiting list. However, as his condition worsened over time, he was put on the waiting list. Later that same year, he was hospitalized after his heart function dropped below 10%.
At that point, it became a race against time for Derek. Finding the right match was not easy, but after several weeks, the right match found Derek, and he finally received his new heart.
“It was great seeing Kirstin after transplant,” Derek says of his wife upon waking up after the surgery. But he says, “The biggest hug post-transplant went to my granddaughter, Piper. One of the reasons I went through this [was] to hold the grandbabies and watch them grow. The ability to still compete is a bonus.”
Derek is thankful to his organ donor and the donor’s family. His dream now: running a marathon with his donor family cheering him on.
In between walking, biking, and working to run a marathon again, Derek is also raising awareness of the importance of organ donation and transplantation. He talks to individuals, groups, and even ICU nurses at his local transplant hospital about his story.
While he signed up years ago to be an organ donor himself, Derek says, “I had no idea what it really meant.” So today, Derek wants to bring awareness to more people about the positive impact organ donation can have on people and their families and friends.
You too can change the path of someone’s life for the positive. Learn about signing up as an organ, eye, and tissue donor.