Whenever you’ve been sturdy and athletic all of your life, it’s simple to shrug off sporadic signs, chalking them as much as stress, overwork or dehydration.
That’s the way it labored for Tim DeGeest, 46, a lifelong athlete.
He remembers blacking out again in his highschool wrestling days. Within the years since, he would go out once in a while after bodily exertion.
When he hit 40, fainting spells began taking place extra incessantly—however nonetheless not usually sufficient to trigger him alarm.
A busy father of 4 younger kids, Tim figured this occurred typically as you bought older.
You’re employed out, you get drained, you’re feeling lightheaded.
Not till he handed out whereas headed right into a soccer stadium—smacking his face on the pavement and arising bloodied—did he discover out he had a coronary heart drawback.
Tachycardia
The invention got here to gentle when he went to get stitches on his face.
Relatively than patching him up and sending him on his approach, the physician at a Spectrum Health urgent care requested questions and grew involved.
“She refused to sew me up and needed to ship me downtown to get checked out,” Tim mentioned.
He drove straight to Spectrum Health Butterworth Hospital emergency division, the place suppliers administered an EKG. Not solely did the check register an abnormality, however his coronary heart went into ventricular tachycardia proper there within the emergency division.
The dangerously quick coronary heart rhythm earned Tim an admission to Spectrum Health Fred and Lena Meijer Heart Center.
“Lengthy story brief, I used to be in there for 5 or 6 days,” Tim mentioned. “They put a defibrillator in me after which I had a bunch of cardiologists from there, attempting to determine precisely what was occurring.”
On the time—fall 2016—his coronary heart’s pumping energy measured far under regular. Medical doctors put him on medicine remedy and introduced him in for frequent follow-ups.
Regardless of his wholesome life-style, Tim had coronary heart failure.
The prognosis defined loads, mentioned Carrie DeGeest, Tim’s spouse.
Earlier than his fainting spells ramped up, the couple would usually go working collectively, she mentioned. Carrie would push their youngest baby within the stroller whereas the older children rode their bikes.
“Tim would all the time have the ability to get on the market and go for a pair miles and simply depart me within the mud,” she mentioned.
However with the passing of time, the situation flipped.
“I’m nonetheless pushing the stroller, however I’m form of leaving him within the mud. I used to be like, ‘Man, that’s so bizarre.’ And I bear in mind him saying, ‘Oh, I’m simply getting older,’” Carrie mentioned.
“Hindsight’s 20/20.”
Genetic mutation
One morning in 2017, Tim awoke paralyzed on his proper facet.
Recognizing this as a stroke symptom, he alerted Carrie, who referred to as 911.
He quickly arrived at Butterworth Hospital, the place the neurology staff hurried to remove the blood clot utilizing a catheter process, restoring blood circulation to his mind.
Fortunately, Tim recovered shortly, with out long-term harm.
Within the aftermath of the stroke, heart specialist David Langholz, MD, suggested Tim there may very well be a coronary heart transplant in his future.
The stroke had resulted from his coronary heart points. His cardiac perform confirmed continued decline.
Quickly after, Tim grew to become a affected person of the Spectrum Well being superior coronary heart failure program.
“His presentation was each coronary heart failure and in addition recurrent coronary heart rhythms which aren’t suitable with life,” mentioned Milena Jani, MD, a coronary heart failure specialist with the Spectrum Health Heart Optimization and Evaluation clinic.
Although the cardiology staff had identified his illness as dilated cardiomyopathy—a weakened and enlarged coronary heart muscle—they’d a tough time pinpointing the trigger.
When the usual diagnostic exams yielded no solutions, they despatched Tim for genetic testing.
Outcomes confirmed a uncommon genetic mutation that predisposes an individual to illnesses of the guts and skeletal muscle groups.
“It confirmed that he had this situation generally known as arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy, which comes from the desmoplakin gene mutation,” Dr. Jani mentioned.
Tim was the primary to study that this mutation runs in his household.
It’s comprehensible Tim didn’t acknowledge his coronary heart illness for what it was, Dr. Jani mentioned.
“For any individual like Tim, who has been a go-getter and match and properly all his life … it’s simple to disregard signs and fix them to one thing else,” she mentioned.
“He most likely postpone coronary heart illness for so long as he might, with out figuring out it, by being fully wholesome. Typically genetics simply meet up with you.”
Shopping for time
All through 2018 and a part of 2019, Tim pushed himself regardless of persistent fatigue.
He continued working as a industrial building challenge supervisor. He saved up together with his rising household and took half in church actions.
In July 2019, nevertheless, his well being took a flip.
Whereas lifting weights one morning, Tim’s defibrillator kicked in—not as soon as, however six occasions.
“It felt like a baseball participant was hitting me as laborious as he might throughout my chest with a bat,” he mentioned.
“I actually thought at that time, ‘Wow, I believe I could be dying,’ as a result of the defibrillator was not bringing my coronary heart rhythm again into tempo.”
He went to the hospital, the place the electrophysiology staff changed his machine with one which would supply larger management of his heartbeat.
Whereas this new machine purchased him time, it couldn’t carry therapeutic.
In September—three years after the incident on the soccer stadium—Tim started the transplant analysis course of. He obtained accredited for the transplant checklist.
The remainder of the 12 months felt like a race towards the clock: Tim and Carrie had begun constructing a brand new home in Rockford, Michigan, with Tim as normal contractor.
Nobody might say whether or not they’d have the ability to transfer in earlier than Tim’s coronary heart ran out of time.
“The final week or two, I might hardly even put a doorknob on a door,” he mentioned. “I used to be so weak.”
Simply earlier than Thanksgiving 2019, with a great deal of assist from household and pals, the DeGeests moved into their new house.
A way of calm
The next week, Tim and Carrie visited Dr. Jani within the transplant clinic and mentioned whether or not the time had come to maneuver ahead with the transplant.
Lab outcomes confirmed that it had. Three days later, Tim checked into the hospital.
“I bear in mind one of many medical doctors saying they have been amazed that I got here strolling into the hospital—that all the things was so dangerous, the output of my coronary heart and all the things else,” Tim mentioned.
The transplant staff measured his cardiac output utilizing Swan-Ganz catheterization. Primarily based on the outcomes, the interventional cardiology staff positioned a balloon pump in his aorta. This could hold the blood pumping whereas he waited for a donor match.
Tim spent most of December within the ICU ready for a coronary heart. He and Carrie processed advanced feelings all through their wait.
“It is vitally sobering to suppose that somebody has to die for Tim to stay,” Carrie wrote on Tim’s CaringBridge page.
On the identical time, Tim mentioned, he felt a profound sense of calm.
“I don’t even know if I can clarify it very properly. It’s simply, all through the entire course of, I’ve been fully at peace with it,” he mentioned.
“You recognize, my religion in God is so sturdy and I simply trusted that all the things would end up as God had deliberate—and left it in God’s arms.”
Not that ready for his story to unfold was simple. Within the ICU, the weeks handed slowly for Tim. To brighten his days, the nursing employees introduced in board video games and Christmas lights. They hung out with him in dialog.
“I actually took to him and needed to make him really feel much less like a affected person and extra like an individual,” mentioned Joseph Droppers, NP.
“So after speaking with him—and I used to be his nurse for a number of, a number of days—I obtained actually shut with him.”
Because the nursing staff supported Tim within the ICU, the household’s neighborhood rallied round Carrie and the children as they shuttled between house and faculty and church and hospital.
“God was simply form of bringing us via, utilizing individuals in our lives to stroll us via that entire journey,” she mentioned. “We couldn’t have gotten via this so properly with out them.”
The present of life
On Dec. 31, a transplant staff member woke Tim with the information that they’d recognized a match for him.
The transplant got here on New Yr’s Eve 2019.
That morning, after sending Tim off to the working room, Carrie notified his CaringBridge neighborhood, writing, “Expensive family and friends, WE HAVE A HEART!”
His transplant surgeon, Marzia Leacche, MD, mentioned the timing of this transplant made it notably poignant.
“There’s nothing higher than on New Yr’s—throughout the holidays—to transplant a coronary heart. It’s very, very significant to be working throughout the holidays,” she mentioned.
Each affected households loomed massive in her thoughts as she approached Tim’s transplant.
“You’re actually attempting to do your greatest for 2 households—one which’s cheering and the opposite that’s grieving the lack of their liked one,” Dr. Leacche mentioned.
“You wish to be sure that … the affected person has an excellent final result, as a result of a superb final result for this affected person means a superb final result, in a sure approach, additionally for the donor household.”
Tim’s transplant surgical procedure went simply as deliberate.
And true to kind, Carrie mentioned, Tim practically set a file for the shortest time earlier than discharge after transplant.
Even so, the rehab course of demanded extra from him than both of them anticipated.
“Irrespective of how a lot the transplant staff tries to arrange you for the restoration interval, you’re simply by no means really prepared. It’s laborious,” Carrie mentioned.
Tim admits he needed to see larger beneficial properties quicker. Greater than as soon as, his post-transplant coordinator, Megan Stickroe, RN, needed to remind him to not overdo.
“We had a pair conversations about ‘Your head could wish to be going 100 miles an hour, however your physique isn’t able to go 100 miles an hour but,’” Stickroe mentioned.
“He simply had that drive—and he nonetheless does—to be one of the best that he might be. … He’s an amazing steward of the present that was given to him.”
Perpetually modified
Although he challenged himself at each flip, it took a full 12 months for Tim to really feel that his physique—and his life—had returned to some model of regular.
Now, two years post-transplant, he’s achieved most of his targets, together with resuming his longtime function as a highschool wrestling official, each regionally and on the state finals.
For the entire household, Carrie mentioned, this journey has introduced classes they by no means anticipated.
“We’re form of ceaselessly modified within the sense that even our youngsters have extra empathy for individuals going via tough occasions, well being journeys,” she mentioned. “And I might say that’s true for Tim and me as properly.”
One other factor that can by no means be the identical for Tim? New Yr’s Day.
Now it’s not only a second to show the web page on the outdated 12 months, he mentioned, however a time to have fun the “miracle that I’m nonetheless alive.”
