Munster athletic director Brian Clark had one conflicting thought when he was lying in bed last summer at the University of Chicago Medical Center waiting for a heart transplant.
He couldn’t pray for one.
It was a difficult moment for a spiritual man who believes in the power of prayer.
“I was like, ‘God, whatever your will is, I’ll accept it,’” he said. “Praying for a new heart meant someone had to die. My wife and I just couldn’t do that.”
On Aug. 13, 2017, Clark got what he couldn’t pray for.
A new heart.
He couldn’t be more grateful for the gift. He considers himself lucky.
He can measure his gratitude on the treadmill.
He walks two miles at 3.4 mph easily.
Before the transplant, it took all his energy to get from his desk to the bathroom across the hall.
Now, he can lift light weights and go to volleyball and soccer games without feeling tired. Most importantly, he’s back at work full time.
It’s not easy.
The medicine makes him cranky, his kidneys aren’t working properly, and he’s one bad cold away from a long hospital visit.
But you’ll never catch him complaining. He’s alive and he gets to hang around his five children, his wife and Munster’s student-athletes.
“I missed the people and I missed going to events,” he said.”It’s nice to be around people.”
The journey from near-death to working again at Munster happened because “God was working for me.”
His problem started in May 2017 when his ejection fraction — the rate a heart pumps blood — dropped into the teens. Anything below 35 is serious, while a good heart beats around 75, he said.
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Clark had a bad break with his heart.
In 2006, doctors replaced a damaged valve. Two days later, he had a blood clot that caused a heart attack, leaving his heart permanently damaged.
He spent 12 years fighting congestive heart failure.
During a May visit to the University of Chicago, his electrophysiologist suggested he see the “heart failure” doctor.
After a screening by a doctor who performs heart transplants, Clark returned on July 26 for an appointment with the heart doctor.
He thought they were going to adjust the “wires in his defibrillator and change his medication.”
Instead, they told him he couldn’t leave. His heart was on the verge of giving out. He had no idea that was coming.
“That was rough,” he said. “I told them I needed my wife.”
The good news was doctors put him on a balloon pump. It’s a device which looks like a laptop with hoses attached that pumps blood. Clark had to wheel it around wherever he went.
That was instant relief. He was soon circling the quarter-mile hallway loop at the hospital.
“It was great,” he said. “I was running around the halls. I hadn’t felt that good in years. It was fun.”
On Aug. 10, Clark was officially approved for a heart transplant. Doctors told him not to get too excited. It would likely take three or four months to get a heart that matched.
They were wrong.
On Aug. 12, Clark got a phone call in his room from a friend. A relative had died. He was a 36-year-old male donor. The friend wanted Clark to have it. Clark said he’d tell his medical team, figuring it was a long shot. Nurses and doctors told him the donor list didn’t work that way.
There were too many variables — the heart had to be a match and there were other people ahead of him on the donor list.
That afternoon, nurses stopped by and took 26 vials of blood, Clark said, because of a potential match.
The next morning, they prepped him and said they were performing the transplant at 11 a.m. Clark was out of surgery at 5 p.m. with his friend’s relative’s heart.
Clark said it was an “act of divine intervention.”
Clark received the heart because of direct donation. That means the donor requested it for a specific person. Doctors told him that only happens for between five and 10 percent of the transplants.
Clark has hit a pivotal point in his recovery. He celebrated his one-year anniversary two weeks ago. Odds of living longer increase dramatically for heart transplant recipients after a year.
He returned to work part time last spring and full time when school started.
Clark said his biggest adjustment was getting used to the flutter of his new heart.
“It was beating so much, it felt like something was wrong,” he said. “I hadn’t felt that in years. I don’t think that way now. It feels normal.”
Doctors don’t like to put a number on a prognosis for heart transplant patients, but Clark and his wife met a man at a University of Chicago heart transplant gala that has had one for 26 years.
It’s still beating strong.
Clark would love to be that guy.
Whatever happens, though, he will take nothing for granted.
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