NEWS
WCVB-TV 5 BOSTON
Boston man receives heart transplant after a 7-month hospital stay
MAY 3, 2023 - "A man who lived in a Boston hospital for seven months while waiting for a heart transplant has gone home after receiving a new lease on life.“I want to go lay on my bed. You know hospital beds are okay, you know, but they're not OK for seven months," Jay Toland said."
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Post-heart transplant, Jay has joined the HeartBrothers Patient Board of Advisors to help spread hope to other heart transplant patients on their own difficult journeys.
MARBLEHEAD CURRENT
Marbleheader with new heart has life-saving message: Be a hero
April 27, 2023 - "By sharing his incredible story of receiving a life-saving heart transplant, Marbleheader Gary Swain hopes to help others and spare families pain. “Sign up to donate your organs,” Swain said in an interview with the Marblehead Current coinciding with National Donate Life Month, which is observed in April. “Be a hero. Save somebody’s life.” Swain, who is 66, had suffered from irregular heart rhythms since he was a teenager. After an array of tests over the next few decades, his arrhythmia worsened, and he was eventually evaluated for cardiac transplantation. An avid outdoorsman and sailor, he continued to hike and sail. “I remember thinking, ‘If I drop dead out racing, what better way to go?’” he said.
lowell sun
After second heart transplant, Billerica’s Mark Cibulski, 38, still playing baseball, the game he loves
April 2, 2023 - "Mark Cibulski isn’t taking anything for granted as he returns to the baseball field. The Lowell Angels player/coach has given his heart and soul to the game – and has the battle scars to prove it. A Billerica native, Cibulski is making a comeback after enduring his second heart transplant four months ago. Thanks to a rigorous rehab regiment, he is ready to play ball again...”
YOUTUBE
Cardiac patient back at the altar & on the ice
September 17, 2019 - "Father Gregory Souin, an Armenian Orthodox priest in Providence and avid hockey player, talks about how he underwent heart failure treatment, cardiac rehab, and a heart transplant at The Lifespan Cardiovascular Institute (LCVI) at Rhode Island Hospital.
GBH NEWS GREATER BOSTON
Bonnie Raitt’s Grammy-Winning Song Touches Local Heart Recipient, Mother of Heart Donor
February 7, 2023 - "In one of a handful of unexpected moments at the 2023 Grammy Awards on Sunday, legendary guitarist and singer Bonnie Raitt won Best Song for Just Like That, which tells the story of a mother who donated her son's heart after he died, and her meeting with the man who received it... The song itself, a work of fiction, but Maine mother Charlene Slaver Roosevelt couldn't be more real. After her son Joey died in 2016, his organs were donated, and in 2017, she got a message from the man who received his heart, Hamid Mahdavy. Since then, the pair have become incredibly close. They both join me now to discuss. Hamid is also a member of the HeartBrothers Foundation: a Boston-based nonprofit to support heart failure patients and their loved ones..."
NEWS CENTER MAINE
Brewer's Passion for Fellow Heart Transplant Patients Beats Stronger Every Day
September 29, 2022 - "Tom Bull received a new heart nearly four years ago after his own couldn't pump enough blood and oxygen to support the rest of the organs in his body. That gift of life inspired the longtime brewer to become bullish on supporting other heart transplant recipients on their journeys to recovery... "
THE PATRIOT LEDGER
Golf Tournament Honors Duxbury Dad
July 29, 2022 - "The life of avid golfer and Duxbury resident Mike Gustin will be celebrated at the 6th annual Gustin Golf Classic from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday, Aug. 1 at the Marshfield Country Club, 515 Moraine St. Gustin battled heart disease for more than 20 years and the event raises money for the HeartBrothers Foundation, which supports people with heart failure and their families..."
THE PILOT
A Heart for the Game
June 18, 2022 - "With a wake-up call before 5 a.m. every morning, you won’t find Jordan Keshler moaning while tying his boots or grumbling on his commute to work at Barker Brook Golf Club in central New York. A passion for golf has Keshler working as course superintendent at the same course his parents once owned. That passion flows in his veins, and he has a new outlook on life — even that sunny pre-dawn disposition — thanks to a heart transplant that has the 41-year-old feeling lively on the links again..."
NBC Boston 10 News
MA Nonprofit Works to Bridge the Gap of Heart Health Inequity
May 30, 2022 - "Heart disease hits Black people at a higher rate than any other group in America, but it's a problem that doesn't need to exist and a local group is working to change the statistics. For Kyree Miller, the fight to help communities of color improve their heart health is very personal. He knows what it feels like to die..."
BOSTON 25 NEWS
Local Foundation Helping Families Find Housing Near Boston Hospitals
April 1, 2021 - "Transplant patients and their families go through a tremendous amount of stress figuring out all the logistics associated with such a big surgery. For example, many patients travel out of town to get to a hospital, which can perform this type of surgery. Karen Klimczak of Avon, Connecticut came to Tufts Medical Center to receive a heart transplant on New Year’s Eve..."
WCVB-TV 5 BOSTON
Foundation Supports Patients and Families During Transplant Process
February 16, 2021 - "When a loved one is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, family often wants to be close by. Geography can make that hard, so a local foundation found a solution, with a luxury apartment near every major Boston hospital..."
WCVB-TV 5 BOSTON
5 FOR GOOD: HeartBrothers Foundation
January 30, 2020 - "Larry Williams and Mike Ashworth met in the hardest of circumstances. Williams was in need of a heart transplant and was too sick to leave Tufts Medical Center. Ashworth, a volunteer with the HeartBrothers Foundation, paid him a visit... 'We have firsthand experience of what happens to your body, what happens to your mind,' Ashworth said. All HeartBrothers volunteers, which include women, are survivors of Heart Failure which is a chronic, progressive condition. Ashworth had already had a heart transplant when he met Williams..."
WCVB-TV 5 BOSTON
Heart Transplant Patient Who Counseled Others Finally Going Home
September 6, 2017 - "There will be a lot of bittersweet tears Thursday at Tufts Medical Center, where a patient who waited more than a year for a heart transplant will be discharged. On his last full day in the hospital, one of Larry Williams’ best friends dropped by to say thank you..."
