I chose life three times….
The Story
For more than two decades, I lived with congestive heart failure. I managed it through diet, discipline, and stubbornness—and for a long time, that was enough. Then it wasn’t.
In the fall of 2024, I arrived at a hospital unable to walk more than ten feet on my own. My ejection fraction was 5%. Death came to my bedside more than once. More than once, I told it no.
On November 9th, 2024, a surgeon removed my heart and replaced it with someone else’s. This is the story of what led to that moment, what happened in the OR, and what life looks like on the other side of it.
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I’m Still in There
There is a moment, somewhere in the recovery arc, when you realize the person you’ve been looking for has been there all along. Not rebuilt. Not reconstructed from parts. Just—retrieved. The way you find something you misplaced and recognize it immediately: yes, that’s mine, I know exactly what that is. For me the retrieval happened…
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Living with Immunosuppression: What the Science Actually Says
This is the companion piece to “The Year of Living Carefully” which covers what it actually felt like to live inside the constraints of an immunosuppressed state. This piece covers the clinical and biological dimensions of post-transplant immune management. The discharge paperwork covers a lot of ground. Medication schedules. Dietary restrictions. Follow-up appointments. Warning signs.…
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The Year of Living Carefully
This is the companion piece to “Living With Immunosuppression: What the Science Actually Says,” which covers the clinical and biological dimensions of post-transplant immune management. This piece covers what it actually felt like to live inside those constraints. My transplant was November 9th, 2024. I came home around November 21st—nine days in the hospital, a…
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The Long Game: Treatment, Management, and What Comes Next
Part Two of Two This is Part Two of a two-part series on Cardiac Allograft Vasculopathy (CAV). Part One—“The Diagnosis Nobody Prepares You For”—covers what CAV is, the history of how medicine learned to detect it, and why the statistics that come up first on a search do not describe the situation most recipients are…
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The Diagnosis Nobody Prepares You For
Part One of Two This is Part One of a two-part series on Cardiac Allograft Vasculopathy. Part Two — “The Long Game: Treatment, Management, and What Comes Next” — covers the full treatment toolkit, the metabolic management picture, what the transplant community has learned from years and decades of lived experience, and what ongoing management…
About James Nerlinger
I’m a writer, developer, and home cook living in Cincinnati, Ohio. I spent twenty-two years managing congestive heart failure before receiving a donor heart on November 9th, 2024. This blog is the story of that journey — and everything that comes after it.
Choosing life, one beat at a time.
Contact
Thoughts? Comments? Discussion?
JNJ@OneMoreBeat.com
