It’s not uncommon for teenagers to stay up all night playing video games or surfing the internet. But that’s not why 15-year-old John Michael wouldn’t go to sleep:  he was just afraid he might never wake up.

John Michael had been a linebacker for the Hondo Owls football team and was in training during the off-season when he developed flu-like symptoms. At first, his symptoms were dismissed as a cold or allergies.

When John Michael failed to improve, however, doctors at Methodist Hospital^* in San Antonio, Texas, discovered his heart was functioning at only ten to fifteen percent. John Michael had a rare form of heart disease known as non-compaction of the left ventricle–a condition he had been born with, but does not typically result in symptoms until later in life. That condition can leave the heart too weak to supply blood to the rest of his body.

During lunch one day in the cafeteria, Gary, a San Antonio bus driver, started coughing. He thought he was choking on a piece of chicken. Then, after another bad coughing spell—this time while he was driving—he went to the Emergency Room where he was shocked to discover he had congestive heart failure.

Gary was referred to Dr. Michael Kwan, a board-certified heart failure and transplant cardiologist with Texas Transplant Physician Group. Gary received an external defibrillator and intravenous medication to help improve his heart’s contractions. “Aside from the defibrillator going off accidentally a couple times, I was feeling fine,” Gary says.

Tom, 50, is a lot of things: a devoted husband, doting father, Army First Sergeant, world traveler, and somewhat accident-prone weekend warrior. But he never imagined he would also some day be called “heart transplant survivor”.

Just six short years ago, a fall off his bicycle while stationed in Germany would change Tom’s life forever. When his face hit the pavement and he broke a tooth, the resulting root canal would trigger a series of events that would ultimately require a heart transplant to save Tom’s life.