Outskirts Press, INC.

"Looks like I'll get a new heart Monday morning!"

Twenty years of heart failure taught the author how to live, but not how to die. Haunted by the experience of saying goodbye forever to his wife and two young daughters, he is suddenly given a second chance. On the hair-raising plane ride to a life-saving heart transplant, he records his thoughts in a "nightwire"-an email to friends and family. The nightwires became an immediate and intimate record of all that happened, from heart disease to a daunting recovery from surgery.



He expresses his thoughts and feelings throughout, together with a wry exposition of his medical ups and downs, his race to restore an ancient house in Italy, and the moving story of his relationship with the donor family. Honest, witty and philosophical, this book is much more than the diary of a heart recipient-it is a look at the meaning of life itself.

I had heart disease for twenty years, expected to die, and then, amazingly, got a heart transplant. Flying back to get the heart I wrote an email to friends. This was my first "nightwire," describing all that I experienced and felt. These nightwires evoked responses from all manner of friends, family, and colleagues, and gradually formed a history of the transplant and beyond. Besides the nightwires, I found myself compelled to write pieces about the insights I had during this vivid time. Later I decided to make a book of all these materials, to share my life and death experience, including the medical facts and the philosophical musings.



Thus came into being this book. It includes my relationship with the donor family and eventually my relationship with the book itself. My lucky life got me a second ticket to the dance, an experience of traveling to the edge of life and returning, and here it is to share.