After just three weeks on the active wait list, Patrick Holland was thrilled to get a call on December 22nd that his new heart was available. It was described as a perfect match and he was ready to fly from his home in Alaska to Seattle for the transplant when an unprecedented ice storm in Washington canceled his flight.
The 57-year-old missed the window for his new heart and it went to another person on the transplant list instead. “It’s just not common to have it that fast,” Holland says. “So I really wasn’t prepared for it when I should have been. You know, miracles do happen — and one did happen. And I missed it.”
To make sure that doesn’t happen again, he’s relocating to Seattle so he’ll be ready when the next heart is available, but he didn’t have a place to stay. And that’s where the kindness of strangers comes in. Several people who heard Holland’s story started reaching out and offering to let him stay with them for a month at a time while he waits and he’s blown away by their generosity. He’s heading to Seattle soon and says, “This way, if there’s a storm, I’ll walk through it if I have to.”
Source: Alaska News Source