My name is Greg and I was born in 1965 with a congenital heart defect. I was a blue baby, blood would only go to my lungs and back to my heart. There were also some valves missing. So at the age of three days, doctors at KU Medical Center in Kansas City did a transposition of the great arteries repair or a Mustard procedure as they called it. They took some of the skin (pericardium) from around my heart and made a new valve, and some of the tubes for the blood to flow through.

They could not completely do the work because I was so small. So at the age of 3 years I went back in and had it completed. I was the youngest patient the doctor had ever done.

Since then I led a very active and normal life as a youth. Playing baseball, water skiing, backyard football, the whole shebang. From the age of 16 until 39 I smoked and had a lot of other bad habits.

I've lived in Missouri, Illinois, Texas and have now lived in Georgia for the last 23 years. I am married and have a wonderful wife, a 14 yr old son and a 22 yr old stepson who is in the Navy, married and gave us a 4 month-old granddaughter.

When I was 25 I had to have my Gall Bladder removed. Shortly after I turned 30 I began to feel poorly. I could complete my work at my job and was going home early at least 3 nights a week. Finally I told my wife that I needed to go to the hospital because I felt like I was dying. I was, I had started going into heart failure. Luckily, I got a real good doctor and was put on all kinds of meds and was told that I would someday need a heart transplant. When I discussed what had happened to me with my parents, they shook their heads and told me that the doctors had told them that I'd be lucky to make it to 30. I was quite upset at this because my parents had never told me this before. They didn't feel that I needed to know so I could worry about it.

Jumping ahead to 2004: my mother passed away very suddenly from a bacterial infection in April. It was devastating to me because I was very close to my mother. Then in November of the same year my father died of pancreatic cancer. Another devastating blow. In May of the following year I ended up in the hospital cause some of my meds had gone toxic in me. Some of it was that my body couldn't handle the stress anymore of losing my parents and trying to clean out their house.

I wound up on life support for 4 days. The doctors were not hopeful of my outcome, but I pulled through. I remained in the hospital for just over 2 weeks. During that time I received a pacemaker/defibrillator. I was not expected to make it but I did. I was also diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension.

Later that year (2005) I was told I had about six months to live by my doctor at Emory. I was sent to UAB in Birmingham, Alabama to get a workup done for a double transplant, heart and lung. During the waiting period of the workup and the results I began taking Tracleer for the Hypertension. When I went back for the results they redid my right heart cath and all of pressures had become normal. I wasn't in immediate need of a transplant. It was the greatest Christmas present I have ever gotten.

As of right now I am actually in too good of health to be put on a transplant list. I still deal with all my symptoms plus possible kidney failure. I was told about this site and decided to join to hopefully find others like me. My doctors tell me that I'm the oldest patient they know of who has had this procedure. That it is not done the same way as mine was anymore. If there any of you out there I would love to here from you.