Second Chances

It’s a strange feeling to have had someone touch your heart – physically touch it, I mean. It leaves you feeling vulnerable, violated and the imprint of fingerprints never fade away from memory. Yes, I’m talking from personal experience, although I wish I weren’t. Heart surgery is no walk in the park. I’d been under the Cardiology knife before, but this time was different; at the grandiose age of 38, I was given a new heart and a new start in life. Here I was, Robert Sanders, of Windsor, Berkshire - the luckiest man on earth – but Jesus! To look at me, you wouldn’t know it!

I had the classic “moon face” and slight weight gain – a side effect from all the prednisolone I’d been taking. Despite recovering well, I was still struggling with my fitness, walking upstairs left me breathless, and I was yet to return to work. The road to recovery was always going to be long – the first year being the most critical – but get through that and I was guaranteed at least another four years; maybe as many as nine – a far cry from the six months I had been given at my appointment that just so happened to be a month prior to my surgery.

Despite the fitness problems, I pushed through and had even started jogging. Just small distances to start with – a few laps around the garden, or to the bottom of the road and back up again. I was really enjoying it – which surprised me as I’d always hated jogging, nay, despised it – but here I was loving it and eager to take this further, perhaps even entering a 5k race six months down the line. So, when I tracked down my donor’s business partner and family and met with them for the first time, they showed me (amongst other things) his bucket list; the only goal that had not been ticked off – was to run the London marathon.

I found the family of my donor five months post-surgery after googling fatal car accidents 29th November 2014 – the night of my operation.

According to Mr Google, Jack Pearson, aged 28 from Chertsey, Surrey, died from fatal head injuries in a car collision on the M4, just outside of Slough.

Visibility that night had been just ten feet and there were 60mph gales as storm Ralph raged on as if it had some personal vendetta against the world. Witnesses stated that Jack lost control of his Aston Martin when a red Vauxhall Astra, driving recklessly by its drunken (police confirmed he was three times over the limit) owner, collided with him whilst changing lanes and misjudging by quite a margin. Jack hit the barrier and was catapulted into the path of an oncoming lorry. The lorry driver, although quite badly shaken up, walked away unscathed, as did the driver of the red Vauxhall, but poor Jack was pronounced brain dead after two hours in intensive care at Wexham Park Hospital, Slough. He’d suffered a fractured skull in three places, several broken bones, and extensive brain swelling.

Further google searches revealed that the driver of the red Vauxhall, Barry Fox, was later tried in a court of law and had recently been sentenced to serve seven years behind bars. I also found Jack’s LinkedIn page and discovered that he had a business in London called Pearson Hammond. It was just around the corner from where I worked – I walked past it on my way to work. Hell, we may have even passed each other in the street dozens of times! I decided to contact Andrew Hammond – his business partner – and that set the ball rolling to meeting Jack’s family.

What if I could run the marathon for him? The next one was in April 2016, 11 months away. I ran it past my wife, and she thought it was a bad idea.

“Heidi” I began “The worst part of having had this heart transplant is knowing that someone had to die, so that I could gain. I feel responsible for Jack’s death. I willed it to happen so that I could get another chance in life. I thought meeting his family would give me some sort of closure, but it hasn’t. If I run the marathon for him and his family, and give them the proper thanks they deserve, I’ll be able to finally pardon myself from this guilt weighing heavy on me.” “Besides”, I continued “I can walk some of the way, I don’t have to run it all. It’s about crossing the finish line, the time it takes is irrelevant.”

Eventually, we agreed to discuss it with the consultant the next day, which was when I was scheduled for my biopsy.

“Absolutely not!” came the answer from Mr Austen, the cardiology consultant who had performed the transplant and was responsible for my aftercare. He was the head of the Cardiology team and one of the leaders in his field of medicine.

“But surely it’s my decision?” I spoke.

“And if your children wanted to play on the train tracks would you let them because it was their decision?”.

Jack’s Bucket List was written in a small black book, no bigger than A5 size. Inside were over a hundred goals, each goal having its own page and a photograph stuck to it. Andrew, (Jack’s business partner and life-long friend) informed me that Jack had started this list back when he was just fifteen years old.

It all started with Goal No 1: - Learn to Ski. A lot of his goals were rather cliché, and typical of a teenager. There was the Bungee jump; Drive a racing car; Backpacking around Europe; Impersonate a famous person, etc. Some of them were quite comical – like Goal No 31: - Start a religion. This was something Andrew and Jack decided to do for a laugh back in their Cambridge days, at an attempt to prove how vastly corrupt and controlling organised religion was. There was only one rule; Do whatever the fuck you want so long as it harms no one. They even had an idol! Some grotesque action figure with three dragon heads that they found in a charity shop. They had three followers – all female of course. And being leaders of this cult meant that they had special consensual privileges with their flock – sometimes all of them at once. The religion lasted all of six weeks.

Goal No 14: - Get Arrested. There were four ticks for this one! no photos though, which makes sense. You’re not going to be able to take a selfie of yourself whilst wearing handcuffs, are you? And it’s not as if you can say to the officer handcuffing you, “Excuse me Officer, my old friend, my old sock; you wouldn’t mind just taking a photo of me sporting these trendy metal bracelets – you know, for the Bucket List album?” No, He certainly couldn’t say that!

Goal No 88; Save a Life. This goal was ticked by Jack’s mother, after he died. Six ticks, and just like Goal No 14 – no photos. “Jack saved the lives of six people the day he died – yours included” Explained Andrew. “Although she grieves her son terribly, it gives her comfort and peace to know that part of him lives on in these lives he has saved”.

A year after my life-changing surgery, I was given the go ahead from the Cardiologist, and the marathon training finally began. There were rules though. I couldn’t run it in one go, I would run it over a period of six days and had even arranged with the organisers of the Marathon to finish the last five miles on the course, so that I could cross the finish line.

I started off jogging half a mile every other day, gradually increasing it every month until I was jogging five miles – the limit set by my consultant. The first few months were the hardest for sure. My feet suffered badly from blisters – until some kindly neighbour, Tom, informed me of his trick; “Two pairs of socks” He said. “One thin pair and a thicker pair over the top. It stops the friction”. At first, my training was purely just myself and Bungle – our six-year-old German Shepherd, shocked at getting so much exercise but he quickly rose to the challenge. Then my son, Eliot, 8, decided he wanted to come along with me, then my daughter, Darcy, 10. Pretty soon word got around the neighbourhood about my marathon run and the reasons behind it, and so other kids and their Dads – dogs and all - decided to ditch their Xboxes and PlayStations and join in too. Some days I’d have as many as twenty running with me – others just five. But the support was a much-needed encouragement on the days when the weather was disagreeable, and I just couldn’t be bothered. I’d think of the regulars and I’d force my backside off the sofa and get into my size nine trainers.

On the 24th of April 2016, I started the last leg of the 36th London Marathon in Commercial Road (Mile 21 on the marathon route). My progress had been tracked on a Garmin, and data submitted to the organisers to make sure that I complete the required 26.219 miles – the length of the Marathon.

The atmosphere was electric, and the crowd kept me going. Andrew and my neighbour, Tom, ran alongside with me to support and make sure I was okay. I was doing well, despite the heat – it was unusually hot that day, 18 degrees Celsius and the skies were perfectly clear. Almost 40,000 people signed up to compete, which was a record at the time.

Three miles into my five-mile stretch, I slipped and hurt my ankle badly. Medics iced and bandaged it, but I was advised not to go any further. When I first decided to do this marathon, everything was stacked against me. But despite all the odds, I did the training and now only had two miles to reach my goal, I was not stopping now! So, Tom and Andrew stood either side of me and supported me and I in return put my arms around them, and we hobbled our way to the finish line. My wife and children were waiting for me and cheering me on. She took a photo, which is now stuck in Jack’s Bucket List under Goal No 97: - Run the London Marathon.

I finally had the closure I needed. In so many ways Jack was an inspiration to me. I was now inspired to set out and reach my own goals – my own bucket list. A list that involved my children and wife. I might never live to see the most important moments of my children’s lives – the graduation; walking down the aisle; holding their first child. What I can do, is be there for them now – making memories that they can look back on and remember for the rest of their lives. Memories that’ll show them that they and their Mother were loved wholly, eternally and unconditionally.

I’ll always have Jack with me - of course. I have a piece of him that still lives on inside me; but I have more than that, as he didn’t just give me his heart on the day that he died - he also gave me a part of his soul.

*****

Two weeks after completing the marathon, Andrew surprised me with a cheque for £20,000. He had secretly set up a fundraiser for me and my family, explaining my story and how I’d run the marathon as a thanks to my donor. People had been very generous! And you know what I’m going to use the money for? Well, I’ll donate £1000 to the British Heart Foundation to start with, and the rest will be spent on building memories with my wife and kids as we complete our very own bucket list.