Dear Family and Friends,

June 10, 2015

Hey Everybody.

I just wanted to give you an update since the transplant. It’s been a long hard journey on my way to recovery. I’m doing well but I have a further way to go. In pursuing my pulmonary rehab (exercise), I discovered that my legs are all but shot but I am working hard to make something out of them. I still have to make constant trips to Pittsburgh so they can take back my lungs a small piece at a time in a procedure they call a Bronchoscopy (biopsy of the lung). This is necessary to check for rejection. I have to take this trip every two months. This is where your participation and donation to our fundraising has helped - traveling to and from Pittsburgh, residence while there of and food. This is a doubly expensive venture as I have to be accompanied by a caregiver. While this happens of course, home here in Boston must be maintained at the same time while members of my family take turns rotating traveling with me as a caregiver. I have good days and I have bad ones but as of late the good are beginning to outnumber the bad and with some effort I am getting stronger and stronger each day. All of this is only possible with your continued support, contributions and prayers without which none of this is could have happened.

This leads me to thank one other who has yet to be mentioned. I want to Thank my God Almighty for whom all things are possible. I am no young man and in my life I have one some things. Everyone say’s God is all merciful. But that’s not always true. ”Vengeance is mine says the Lord”. I didn’t ask God for my life or even for a successful operation. I didn’t ask him to guide the hands of the surgeon’s. Let me explain. I didn’t feel worthy to ask for those things. With all the wrong I had done in life while knowing God and being who I was anyway, how could I ask this mighty God to help me now that I was in trouble? What I did ask God for was that “His will be done”. I know, it doesn’t sound like much since his will, is done anyway but it was a way of accepting what might well be my inevitable death. I was told by the doctors that the operation had a 50-50 chance but I could no longer live like I was living so death was preferable to that kind of life. I gave it over to him. You wouldn’t believe it and even now my belly fills with tears and my eyes water when I think of it. A complete calm came over me like I had never experienced in life. I looked to my right and my son was crying as they wheeled me into the operating room, “it’ll be alright son,” I said “no matter how it turns out.” He knew who I was, and He smiled on me anyway. For what purpose I will discover as I move forward. I find myself reaching out; trying to help people in a similar situation from which God has given me relief. That He smiled on me, knowing who I was calls for me to make a change in life and to become all that I am capable of being. In that I must ask all who are able, to become transplant donors and to contribute to the saving of lives as our last act of love for self and kind.

God bless you all and again thank you for your continued faith, prayers, contributions and support.