Foster and Friends
Foster and Friends
Foster and Friends Vol 134 "Have a Heart"
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Bud and Mac dive into a very emotional story. An Orlando media personality and G-League play-by-play voice, 36-year old Nick Gryniewicz, experienced the joy of receiving a donor's heart...so he could live. Nick tells the story of a two year, life saving roller-coaster.
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I would take a trip to Cleveland, Ohio, never, never, never leave until I got a new heart. For whatever reason, the right side of my heart was struggling to pump. They did a workup on me. I thought that I was there to see some electrophysiologists to have another procedure. They deemed that procedure was not necessary because my heart wasn't gonna make it much longer.
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SPEAKER_05It's a rush, especially you know, when a guy comes down trailing by two here at home, buries a tree to take the lead, and you can kind of feel the roof come off the building. And to be part of that is just incredible.
SPEAKER_01Now, from the NSB Radio Network, Foster and Friends, here's Bud and Mac.
SPEAKER_09Welcome in. It is Foster and Friends, NSB Radio Network. Pretty special day today, and our guest, and we'll tell you about that in just a second. Nick Grinowitz is going to be with us. He uh uh I just said I'll tell you in a second, I'm telling you now. Um, Nick is a local uh sports guy, play-by-play guy who I've known for a long time, who uh received a heart, and at uh he's now 36 years old and doing well, but at age 34, 33, 34, I had to have a heart transplant. We'll tell you more about that in a little bit. But how you been? Changes in the athletic department. Real quick, we'll touch on this before we talk to Nikki. Um uh Witt Babcock uh stepping down. What uh what was your reaction?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, uh, you know, it was um surprising. Uh I know also uh, you know, with uh there's been some rumors and and that type of thing, but uh, you know, all I can say this, Witt's done a tremendous job. You know, he was the second longest tenure uh AD in the in the ACC and the sixth longest in the country. But it's showing, you know, what's happening you know around the country. There's several ADs here recently have have been stepping down and stepping aside. And I think uh it's just showing the pressure's just not on the football coaches and the basketball coaches in this, you know, next phase of college athletics. It's really a lot of the pressure, if not all of it, the brunt of it's is on these athletic directors. And uh, but but Witt has done a tremendous job here. He's had a tremendous career. Um, you know, he he's a c we've accomplished so much. He spearheaded this next phase for us of Virginia Tech to get us back, hopefully, to relevance in in the in college football and um, you know, with the hiring of James Franklin. But uh, you know, Witt's done tremendous things for Virginia Tech, and he's been incredibly kind to me and my family. And so uh I hate to see him go. I know he's gonna hang around in some capacity, uh, but by the same token, I know he's looking forward probably to being able to do some things and that this time will afford him to do uh with his family and and uh some things outside of uh the athletic office.
SPEAKER_09Yeah. Uh was the Tim Sands uh resignation was it uh was it a surprise as well? Or had Tim hinted towards that he would be. No, you know, Dr.
SPEAKER_02Sands um his his contract was coming up, I think, in a in another year. And I think so he went ahead and made that announcement so they can get uh, and I say they, it'll be a search committee however they want to, they'll do a national search to uh sure to bring in the next uh president. And I'm not sure how that will work, if the president they will align with the and and and hire the next AD or be in involved in all that. I think it's really important though in my world that there we're aligned that way with the president with the AD and obviously the football coach. You know, outside of the football coach, you know, that's that's probably the most notable person in a big time program, you know, across the country, more so than your president athletic director. But we need to have an A, in my opinion, uh uh a strong uh athletic driven AD. I mean, uh president, I would like to see that. And uh, but no, I I'm um uh it's it's there's exciting times, but uh uh you know, we're a tremendous institution and we'll track some elite people for you know both of those jobs.
SPEAKER_09No, for sure. All right, we'll we'll go to break. We're gonna come back. An amazing story about a heart transplant to a young man who uh uh had fainting spells and did not expect uh uh did not expect what was gonna happen to happen. So that's our story next. Foster and Friends, NSB Radio Network. We'll be right back.
SPEAKER_02Hi, this is Bud Foster for Envision. For over 30 years, my good friends, Dr. Scott and Becky Mann, have built a practice that truly cares about their patients.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, we just try to do everything with the patients in mind. Everything we do is from the patient's point of view, and we try to put them first and really have state-of-the-art equipment and technology and then old-fashioned personal care and attention.
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SPEAKER_08Over 30 years ago, we started with one office, one staff member, one doctor, and we've just kind of grown from there. The community's been great in supporting us, and now we have two locations. Uh, we're getting ready to add our six and seven doctors and about twenty-five staff.
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SPEAKER_01Foster and Friends is brought to you by Britt House Pizza in Radford, Virginia. Brick House means great times. Once again, here's Bud and Mac.
SPEAKER_09Welcome in, Foster and Friends, as we continue on this weekend, and uh really happy to have Nick Renowitz uh with us. Uh but as I told you, Nick's longtime uh friend, and uh he used to produce uh a golf show that uh we did in the Orlando market. Uh Nikki was with uh the ESPN affiliate, Cox Media, for nine years and now is a vice president for True Native Media and uh a podcast company which we will get into. But uh, you know, but when you lose contact sometimes with people, you don't see what's going on, and you know, they get married or have a couple of kids, and you oh, I didn't know, didn't know. So one day I go to Facebook and all of a sudden Nikki's in the hospital. And I went, All right, what's going on? Where is this? And then next thing I know, and I still call him Nikki because he's like a younger brother. And so, next thing I know, Nick's getting a heart transplant. Next thing I know, he's got the heart ringing the bell. Next thing I know, he's back doing G-League basketball for the Lakeland Magic, you know, uh, the G League team doing play-by-play. It went that fast. I did that in 60 seconds. Nikki, it's great to see you. How are you feeling? Well, it didn't go that quickly for me, Mac. No, I understand.
SPEAKER_06I'm doing fantastic. It's it's good to be here, good to talk with you both.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, it's quite the story. And Bud is, I know we have a thousand questions, so Bud, go ahead and shoot because uh I've I've got a million questions for Nick too. So just go ahead.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, I mean, uh once uh uh number one, welcome. And and uh and then uh you know, Mac, once we we he said that you were gonna come on board and did our research a little bit, and uh I mean, my gosh, it is an incredible story. But I mean, all of a sudden, you know, and I when I was following this thing, it's like you had one side of your heart basically stopped working, right? And then, but what is that as um as an individual? I mean, were did you have like an episode? Did you have, was it just something you were feeling body-wise? Were you tired? I mean, can you go through that process, which you were initially feeling? And and then I know there was a sense of urgency probably then and after that, right?
SPEAKER_06Yes, I I mean it it was it was a series of episodes uh that happened really over um about a two-year period or so. And so really where it all started for me was in uh the the winter spring of of 2022. And so as Mac mentioned, I was working with Cox Media Group at ESPN Orlando um up until the summer of 2022. So this is kind of going right along with that. And I started to have these fainting episodes. So I would go, you know, my wife and I, we lived in downtown Orlando uh in the Ivanhoe area, and we we were renting this uh this duplex basically, where or where uh or townhouse, but I mean we had stairs that would go upstairs, and I would, you know, getting ready to go to work, I would go up the stairs and I would get to the top of the stairs, and I would get this lightheaded feeling, and I would just hit the ground. I would pass, I'd know it was coming. It was there was warning, I could feel it coming on, and it was kind of this um, this dizziness kind of thing, you know, people who have had high blood pressure, they understand where you're kind of just, you know, you're dazed, you know. And all of a sudden, and I remember I would turn to my wife at times and I'd say, here it comes, and I would just hit the ground. And so that went on um for about two, three months, um, which included a trip to Asheville, North Carolina with a a bunch of our friends from uh the radio days. Um, and while I was there with them, same thing. I fainted a couple times while on a pickleball court while we were playing pickleball. And everyone kind of looked at me and I was like, it's fine, it happens. And I remember a friend said to me, This doesn't just happen, dude. You know what I mean? And you know, my body had kind of been compensating for issues for quite some time. So it all felt normal to me. Um, so my wife, um, which is why I'm still alive because of my wife. Um, most men are after they get married, I feel like, but uh finally, finally uh beat me into submission and said, You're gonna go see a cardiologist. So I go see a cardiologist. Um, this is in uh April, March, March, first week of March, let's say, of 2022. And uh I go to the doctor's office, drove myself there. On my way in, I faint in the hallway. Um so and I I had never been sick a day in my life. Nothing had ever ever been wrong with me, really, never spent a night in the hospital, um, and don't want anyone to know there's anything wrong with me. A woman who worked for um a Quest Diagnostics, I think it was, you know, the blood-taking lab wakes me up in the hallway. And I just kind of play it off like, oh, I'm fine, don't worry about it. And so I walk up to that office and the doctor says, We're gonna put this halter monitor on you. It's this like uh this device, they stick it to your chest and it monitors your um heart rhythm so that they can then go back and look. Um, they put that on on Tuesday, Wednesday, let's say, the following Saturday. I go to the beach with my good friend from high school. They just had their first kid, and uh, I think they're on the beach. And my buddy um was pre-med at one point in time. I would say who hasn't done it, but still, you know, and he says, You gotta go to the hospital. So I call my cardiologist. Long story, we never needed the halter monitor. I end up going to the hospital, and they decide they see that I have something called a third-degree heart block, which means that the electrical current in my heart stops once it passes through the middle of my heart. This is all layman's terms. I'm not a doctor, I have no idea. But what it what it basically meant was that uh the electrical current in my heart was telling my heart the top half of my heart to pump and the bottom half of my heart to pump at the same time. And what was happening was the blood was not making its way all the way to my brain, basically, meaning I would pass out. And so they needed to give me a um a pacemaker. So I had my first pacemaker put in in April of 2022. Um, and then from there they said, go live your life. You're gonna be just fine. I'll speed this up, I promise.
SPEAKER_09No, no, no, no. This is no, this is too good. So don't leave anything out.
SPEAKER_06So I I get out of the hospital and I will never forget when they told me that I needed a pacemaker. They take me in uh to this procedure room and they roll me in and they're doing these tests on my heart or something like that. And the doctor gets done and he says, Yep, you just bought yourself a pacemaker. And being 30, I'm 32 at that point in time, I I I freak out, you know, and I'm saying this is the worst thing that could happen to me. It's not, but it was I think it's the worst thing that could happen to me. Um, and I put the pacemaker in and basically say, go back to your normal life. You know, nothing really changed for me. I continue to uh the same recreation, you know. I'm running three, four miles. Um, you know, at one point in time I was running three miles a day or so, and so I'm really, you know, I'm fine. Um I go through about a year and a half, two years. Um I get to the summer of 2023, and it's not something I'm aware of, but like I start to kind of tack on like a bunch of weight. I go from like about 175 pounds overnight to like 200 pounds, 215 pounds. I just I got oh yeah, I got huge, you know. And like I I've always been kind of a bigger guy in different parts of my life. So I'm just like you know, and I remember I'm saying to my wife, I'm like, I just gotta get in the gym or something. I don't know. And I'm running, but I'm slowing down. I go from like an eight-minute mile to a 10-minute mile to, you know, and like I have all of this data on my Apple Watch that's telling me something's wrong, and I'm I'm ignoring it basically. And so um I get to Thanksgiving of 2023, and my wife and I, we just bought a house in in this house uh in September of 2023. And so, like every young couple that has their first home, what do they want to do? We want to host Thanksgiving. Uh, so we say we invite her family, my family, everyone's coming to Thanksgiving at our house. Um, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I will never forget this as long as I live. I get up from my desk at work. It's you know, 6, 6:30, somewhere around there. And I say to my wife, you know, like I'm just not, I'm not feeling that well. Like I feel like I'm just kind of, you know, I'm I'm a little, I'm out of it, you know, I'm kind of just tired. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go to sleep. And she says, okay. That night I get up and I get very sick. I'm throwing up, I'm, you know, I'm just very, very sick. And so the next day I message my boss, I said, I'm gonna take a day off. Like, I'm just not feeling well. I've got a stomach flu, something like that. Um, long story, we don't host Thanksgiving. I can't get out of bed. Um, I'm in bed from Tuesday until Sunday, cannot move, um, cannot get up. Every time that I get up, I get sick. I'm just not feeling well, can't keep anything down. And my wife says to me, you know, you have this pacemaker, you know, could it be anything that's related to your heart? And I'm like, Well, my my heart, it's my stomach. You know what I mean? What do you mean? Um, the the moral of the story here is everything is connected. And so we on Monday morning, um, I text my doctor and I say, Hey, you know, the cool thing about these things is actually the pacemaker is paired Bluetooth with my cell phone. And because of that, I can send a report to my cardiologist for them to review. And I say, I'm gonna send you a report. Can you look at it? Cardiologist has the report for 15 minutes. He says, You got to get the hell in here. Come in here. So my wife puts me in the car. Um she's a nurse, by the way.
SPEAKER_09But his wife is a nurse, so she's a baby nurse.
SPEAKER_06She was in uh mother, baby, and Nick Q. So she was helpful, but the entire time she looks at me, she's like, Are you a baby or have you recently had a baby? And I cannot help you. And so we get to my cardiologist's office, um, we go into the into the room, and the doctor says to me, Here's what we see. You're in this arrhythmia right now called ventricular tachycardia. Um, and it is a very dangerous arrhythmia where your heart rate is out of whack. Like, I mean, my and if you I would watch on my Apple Watch, I would go from 80 beats per minute to 115 to 160, and then it would slow back down and then it would go back up. And, you know, um, and my doctor looked at me and he said, you know, we're we need to go to the hospital. He's like, I've already called an ambulance. Now, why he had me drive into his office to take an ambulance from there, I don't know. Maybe there's a kickback situation there from Seminole County. I'm joking, but for the first time in my life, I took an ambulance route. So these these guys show up. I'm sitting there and all of a sudden he's like, I call an ambulance, and like four firefighters show up and they put me in the, they put me on a gurney, they roll me out, they're putting all these IVs in me, they put me in the back of the ambulance, and they've got that big life box that looks like a boom box, you know. And then guy says to me, you know, how are you doing this? And I said, What do you mean? He said, You're in ventricular tachycardia. Usually people are dead by now or they're unconscious. And I said, Well, that's what I really want to hear, so thanks. I'm sitting up just fine. I'm like, You guys want to play cars? Is there anything like, you know, I'm I'm a little bored actually, if you don't mind. And so they take me to the hospitals. It turns out I'm in heart failure. Um, my the right side of my heart has started to fail. My ejection fraction, which you want it to be somewhere around 55-60. And the ejection fraction basically is um the strength of the pumping, the amount of uh of blood your heart pumps through um when it pumps. And so you want it to be around 5560. The right side of my heart is pumping at about 25%. Um, and so we're very reduced there. And the doctor says to me, we're gonna need to put a bigger pacemaker in here. We're gonna put one in there that has a defibrillator in it, so that if it um monitors that you're in this arrhythmia, it will charge up and shock you out of it. And I said, Okay. So at this point in time, this is really where my life changes. Um, it's November of 2023, and uh they have told me, hey, you're in heart failure. I'm on all the heart failure meds. And how old are you? And how old are you at this time? Uh let's see, I would be, I would just have turned 30. So this is 23. I would have just turned 34. And so I have no idea what's happened or why. No doctor does. They they're doing all these tests, they're looking at my heart. They needed to open up my my, they need to go in and they had to do something called an ablasion. So what they found was a bunch of scars on my heart from the condition that I now that we now know that I have, but we didn't really know at the time. Um, and what they had to do is they had to burn basically, um, they had to burn these scars off because that's what was happening was the electrical current was moving through the outside of my heart, and the scar would redirect that and it would cause this, you know, arrhythmia, basically. And so I go uh I get out of the hospital in the uh in January, late December, January of uh 2023, and I start to see some doctors down in Miami at the Cleveland Clinic in Weston. Um and they're evaluating me. And at this point in time, I'm in heart failure, but nothing is so bad that there's anything else that needs to be done. I'm on these, you know, this heart failure medicine, jardiance, and a few other things. I'm trying to remember the names at this point, but um, that they're that I'm hoping that I can improve my ejection fraction and get back to a normal life at some point in time.
SPEAKER_09The incredible story of a heart transplant patient, Nick Grenowitz from Orlando, Florida. Bud and I and Nick returned right after this. This is fostering friends in the NSB Radio Network. When you walk into a restaurant, say your favorite pizza place, what's the first thing you notice? The way it smells, the vibe, maybe the party atmosphere. If you're traveling in Southwest Virginia or lucky enough to live in the Radford area, hopefully you have visited Brickhouse Pizza, a staple since 1972. Brickhouse Pizza has become a legendary stop. Jeff and Diane's Main Street attraction features artisanal wood-fired pizza with fresh ingredients prepped every day. Brickhouse's pizzas are made with flour imported from Italy. Throw in the recipe for their homemade brew, and you have the recipe for fun. Brickhouse Pizza is open Tuesday through Friday at 3 30, Saturdays at 11:30, and the Sunday brunch begins at 10. Fresh food, cold beer, great times. That's Brickhouse Pizza, 311 West Main Street in Radford.
SPEAKER_03People love the campus here. People love the school, and they don't want to see it decrease. They want to see it continue to grow. And this is a university that has grown just in the last eight or nine years. They want that to continue.
SPEAKER_01Foster and Friends is presented by the River City Distillery in Radford, makers of Win Vodka in Gentleman's Journey Bourbon.
SPEAKER_09Foster and Friends with Bud Foster, Mac McDonald, and our guest is Nick Grenewitz, a Chicago native who experienced in his mid-30s a heart failure and heart transplant. He's doing great. He continues his story as he finds out he's got to go to Cleveland.
SPEAKER_06I'll push us ahead um to October of 2024 when everything kind of goes nuts here. As I I fly to Denver. Um, and I had been having arrhythmia issues during this time, where like my heart will go into an arrhythmia, but usually like it starts and it would stop. So I'd spend 10 minutes kind of with my heartbeat at like 140, 150. Um, I wouldn't go see anybody because I'd done it and I know that I can handle it very well. But um I get to uh in October of October 2nd, I fly to Denver. My brother lives out there. We're twins, he's four minutes older than me, and we're gonna celebrate our birthday. And so um at this point in time, I go out there. Um, and now I'm at the altitude of Colorado, which like you know, leading up to that trip, I wasn't feeling that great, but I kind of wanted to push through it and play. This for a while. It was our 30th. This would have been this would have been our 35th birthday. And so I'm in Colorado. We celebrated our birthday on Friday night, the fourth. And then I'm there on the fifth. I'm set to fly home on the sixth. On the night of the fifth, I'm up all night and I'm stuck in this arrhythmia. My heart rate is like 150, 160. I'm watching it on my Apple Watch just go up and down and up and down. And the worst part about the the worst, but I mean one of the worst parts of it is that when I'm dealing with this, you can't sleep. What'll happen is that you'll fall asleep for like a second and you'll just kind of choke awake because your body is not, it's not settled. And so I'm up all night. I call my I call my my mother, um, who's been with me through this every step of the way, and she says, you know, call your doctor. You know what I mean? You got to call your doctor and see what happens. And I so I fortunately had my doctor's cell phone number. Um, and I call him up and I say, here's where I'm at. And he said, You're supposed to go to Cleveland for a um evaluation um in three weeks. Why don't you just fly there right now? And so my brother and I, we get on a united flight, commercial flight. I'm still in this arrhythmia because I don't want to go to a local hospital in Denver. If I do that, I'm gonna get stuck there for two or three days, they're gonna pump me through, pump me full of a bunch of stuff, and then frankly, I'm gonna be in the same same boat in a couple of weeks. And so I decide I'm just gonna try to get there. I go to Cleveland and I walk in the door and I didn't realize at that point in time that the door's locked behind me. You know, that they're going, they evaluate me, they realize I'm in ventricular tachycardia, they pump me full of a bunch of drugs at that point in time to finally get my heart under, under uh um, under control. They went through and they pulled all the data from my pacemaker. I've been in that arrhythmia for about 23 hours at that point in time. And so I'm exhausted. And so the doctors are doing all of these tests on me and stuff. And um the cardiologist, Dr. Carmona, um, who was my cardiologist in uh in Cleveland until I recently transferred my care, comes in. My brother, my wife, my mom are in the room and says, you know, there's not a whole lot we can really do here. Um, you're gonna need a heart transfer. And as as crazy as it sounds, um, and it probably has something to do with my sadistic sense of humor, the first thing I say to my doctor is, So my dog will live longer than me. That was the first thing I say to him. Um, and he says, No, not necessarily. You know what I mean? And it's just like it's it's this whole thing of emotion that just kind of, you know, of course. And, you know, my my whole family, you know, we're all kind of kind of dealing with it. And he says, The electrophysiologists want to do a few more tests to determine whether or not they want to do something, but we think we're gonna put you on the Unos list for a heart transplant. A few days go by, um, and they finally come back to me and they say, Um, then the electrophysiologists don't want to touch you. They think that if they open you up and they try to do something, they'll kill you, basically. Um, and so at that point in time, I'm put on the UNOS list. This is somewhere around like October 11th. It had been like six, seven days I'd been there before they made the determination. And from there, we start to wait. Yeah, they wanted to really cut me open, is what they really wanted to do. Um, and so yeah, this is this is pro this is around mid-October or so. Um, it had been less than a week from my birthday. And um, they say we're gonna put you on the list. That and that involves a bunch of tests.
SPEAKER_09And 2023, by the way, that's mid-October 2024. Or 24, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_06And so um they have to do a bunch of tests. You need to get a a bunch of um different uh tests done and different um, you know, different things looked at. They need to, I they they need to do different um, what is it? They need to know what your blood, what your um, what your blood type is, right? That's a that's a big deal. They need to make sure that you have um different um that you have different, they give you different medicine and things like that for um as well. And so we go through this. They they check your teeth, they do all kinds of stuff, they check for any signs of infection, all of that. And so um they do all of that testing, and then so things are there's a lot going on for about four days, right? And then nothing, basically. And so what happens is that they move me to a specialized floor in Cleveland. Um, J32 is what it's called. That's the ward there. It is 10 rooms, 10 beds. Everyone's waiting for the same thing. We're all waiting for heart transplants. Wow, yes. There is some sort of a screenplay to be written here. I'm not the one to write it. Um maybe, maybe I'll work with someone someday. But it is, it's 10 people, we're all waiting for a heart transplant, all different blood types, all different sizes. We all come from different backgrounds. Um, all different ages, too, I'm guessing, right? Oh, yes, absolutely. Uh, good friend of mine, um, Bob, who I met, I was I'm in room six. And actually, I they go in, they wheel me in there. The and I'm in room six, they they set my bed up, and I can look right out my window and uh or my door, which is glass, and I can see the bell that you ring when you get the transplant, right? They have this bell here. Um, and when you get the call and they're taking you out to do the surgery, you ring this bell. Okay. And so every time while I'm there and someone gets one, I have a front row seat to someone ringing that bell. Um, and it does not matter what time of night, day, afternoon, evening, middle of the night, they will ring that bell because people wait and they wait a long time for this. And so for about four days, it's very busy. And then after that, the only activity that you have that is not in your room is you can go for a walk. That's it. And so I've got anti-arrhythmics that they have me on. So I have all of these, you know, IVs that are in me and all of that. And so I can't go for a walk by myself. There has to be a nurse available to walk with me in case I fall or anything like that. And to put it straight, probably of the 10 people that are there, I was probably in the best shape of anybody. I was the youngest person that was there. The only issue that I had was the arrhythmias. The heart failure was not advanced enough to where it was really hurting me. So I could walk miles a day, just miles. And really, what you have though is you have about 500 feet. You can't leave the ward. I couldn't leave the hospital, right? This isn't scrubs, they don't find the bacteria. And so I'm just going up and down, up and down, and up and down. And finally, like a nurse would say, Hey, I have to see other patients, so I need you to go back to the room. So the first day that I was there, my brother bought me an Xbox. And so all I would do is I would walk all day. I'm on leave from work, my which was a whole nother thing. My boss locks me out of my email so I wouldn't work because we're a remote company. Um, they wanted me to focus on my health. Sure. Um, and so I just start playing, I'm my I'm just playing video games all day. That's really what I'm doing while I'm waiting. Um, they have like a tiny little bike thing in there. So like I'm sitting there, I'm playing NHL 24, uh, winning the Stanley Cup, and I've got like this little bike thing going that I'm just kind of trying to at least keep my body moving. Um, and one of the one of the one of the coolest things that they do is that four times a week they have a heart transplant recipient come and talk to you. So there were different people that would come in the morning and they would meet with me and they'd say do any questions. You know, obviously you're waiting for this. I've been through it. Do you have any suggestions? And the number one suggestion was keep walking, keep moving. It makes the recovery so much easier. And so that's what I did every single day. I would get up, I would walk, I would move, I wouldn't stay too stagnant. Um, I was in room six. A good friend of mine, Bob, was in room that would be that would be five. And he got his heart about uh two weeks, three weeks after I was in there. We would walk together different times. He lives in uh in uh northern Michigan. Actually, I spent a lot of time in Michigan in my life, and so uh he's a big Michigan fan, uh big uh big Jim Harbaugh guy. Um, another guy who had heart problems too. He has Aphib. And uh so we would talk a lot about that. He got his heart and he came back and visited me after his his heart. Um and so I end up waiting, long story, I end up waiting 65 days, is what I end up with. So it was it was a long time.
SPEAKER_09And not knowing, not to interrupt you, I pause, but not knowing if you're gonna see the sunrise the next day.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, it was, I mean, the emotional side of it is a roller coaster that you ride. Um, because also you're waiting for something terrible to happen to somebody else. You know, it's a it's a conflicting feeling where when you get that call, um, and I don't know who my donor is, um, but you know that some likely someone went before it was their time. It was an accident, it was something. Um, and it's very conflicting. Um, many heart transplants or organ transplants happen around the holidays, too, because there are more people traveling, people are getting together. Um, you know, there's a lot, there's misadventures, I would say. And so, you know, we got to Halloween, and the doctors said me when I got there, they're like, You'll be here two weeks. Your normal size, your um, you know, you've got a good blood type, be positive, you'll be fine. You know, two weeks come and go. No, and they say, well, Halloween's a big holiday for organ transplants. You'll get one then. Um, doesn't happen. You know what I mean? Then it's like, okay, well, Thanksgiving. It's three more weeks. I get to Thanksgiving, nothing happens. And I will say, like, not getting a heart uh around that holiday and knowing I had another month until Christmas, um, it it it emotionally broke me a little bit. That was around the time where I was having a bit of a harder time getting through it every single day. Um, I kind of started to shut some friends out, didn't really want to talk to people as much. My wife and my mother are living in Cleveland at this time. My brother is coming in every weekend. He's flying in from Denver to see me on the weekends. Um, and I'm having a hard time because I feel like it's right around the corner. But every day you wake up and the only interaction you get with the doctor is about 15 minutes. They check in on you, but there's nothing to do. We're just waiting.
SPEAKER_09The incredible story of Nick Grenowitz from Orlando, a heart patient to heart transplant, will continue on fostering friends. This is the NSB Radio Network. Stay with us.
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SPEAKER_01From the desk of former coaching great Bud Foster, this is Foster and Friends on the NSB Radio Network.
SPEAKER_09Welcome back, Foster and Friends. And our guest is Nick Grenowitz, Orlando Nate, even a good friend, longtime producer of a golf show that we used to do here. And the jubilation of finding out that as a heart transplant patient to be, the phone call comes in and you've got the heart. Nick continues his incredible story.
SPEAKER_06On December 10th, my wife is scheduled to fly back to Florida. Um, she's got to go back for work. And so her flight is at like 11 o'clock at night. She's got to leave at about nine o'clock. We're sitting, we're watching Survivor. Um, got it. What else? Whatever Survivor and I did while I was in the hospital. And so my wife is packing up. My mother is downstairs in the car getting ready to drive her. Um and she uh she's saying goodbye and the phone rings. And what the doctors have said to me is that if you get a call and it's on my cell phone, it is not on my room phone. If you get a call from an unknown number, you answer that bleeping call because it's a person from Unos that is calling you. And I answer the phone, and that is exactly who it is. They say, Is this Nick Renowitz? Yes. Can you give me your birthday? Yes. Okay. We have a heart for you. Here's all the information we can give you on the heart. Basically, it's a healthy heart, it's traveling in, it should be here. Do you want to do this? Because at any point in time, I have the right to reject the heart. Um, but I say, Yeah, let's, of course, let's let's do it. So at this point, my wife is like, Well, I can't go anywhere now. Um I call my mother, she parks the car, she comes upstairs. All of the nurses come in and like this is the big moment for them. We all have a party for a minute, right? Because it's time to celebrate that we're going to do this. And I call my brother, I FaceTime him. I still have the the uh I still have the screenshot. I FaceTime him and his wife. Okay. My brother is getting on a plane to San Francisco for a trip. And I tell him, I said, I got the heart, and I've screenshot it, and I can see my brother go like this. Like, I'm getting on a plane to fly to the other side of the country. He's able to rework his trip to make it back in time the next. So I wake up the next day. They don't take me down until six o'clock at night. So it is an entire day of waiting at this point in time for them to take me down. They need to do some preparations, but for the most part, you're just sitting there and you're waiting and you're hoping that they don't cancel it, basically, that the heart is in good enough condition. Um and at six o'clock, they take me down, I ring the bell, I say goodbye to my mom, my wife, my brother, um, and they take me all the way to the uh elevator. The elevators take us upstairs to where the surgical rooms are. You go into that room, there's like 60 people in there, it feels like there's all kinds of people. You come in, they've got everything kind of sitting out there ready to go. Um, and I remember they moved me from the transport bed to the uh surgical table or whatever you want to call it. And uh the person says to me, like, Are you doing okay? And I look at them like I'm sure. You know, like there's just a lot going on. And I mean it is very overwhelming. So they and they say, Okay, like we're gonna um we're gonna put you out at this point in time. And so they put a bunch of stuff in there or whatever, and they put that mask over and they say, just start counting back. And it is the scariest moment of my life where they're putting me out, and of course it's the it's a great moment, you're getting the transplant. But my last thought before I go out is am I gonna wake up again?
SPEAKER_09Exactly.
SPEAKER_06And fortunately, I do it's the next day, or maybe two days later. I still haven't figured that out how long I'm out, if I'm being honest. Um, but at that point in time, I go into recovery. Um, and that is on the 13th, and 13 days later, I'm released. I'm let they let me out of the hospital. You are not in the hospital very long, and I start my recovery from there.
SPEAKER_02Well, I guess the whole thing, number one, it's an incredible story, and I know the weight had to be agonizing, you know, and like you said, almost emotionally draining. But um as you go through this, um, is I'm sure there's concerns, and maybe that's all the testing, right? To make sure that all the tissue and everything that you're meshing together is going to be compliant, right? I mean, I'm sure that was over those next 13 days, they really monitor how everything adhered together, I guess, right? And uh and functioned right and and just got every all your organs and everything going back in cohesion. But also, you know, all the incisions, and I'm not talking about your outer bar, I'm talking about where they connect you inside your A organs and all those kind of things like that, man. That's uh, I mean, there's that's just such an invasive.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, it's not like wiring a stereo. No.
SPEAKER_02No, they they do.
SPEAKER_06I mean, you it's 13 days that I was there. Once I showed that I, you know, everything seemed to be going well, they let you go, but then you're coming back weekly. I'm I'm living in Cleveland. I was in Cleveland for another three months post-transfer. Oh, wow. Coming in for the first month, I'm coming in weekly. Um, then I'm coming in every other week, and then I'm coming in basically once a month for those visits. I'm going to cardiac rehab after that, where I'm running, I'm I'm walking on a treadmill and they've got someone monitoring me and all of these things. And so um, yeah, and like what they had during this entire time was they had this uh medical device. I'm trying to, they called it a swan, actually, is what it was. Um, and it was a device that was inserted into my neck. Um, and you can see I kind of have a scar right here um on my neck. And every photo of me in the hospital, you can see that it's this big device, and what it did is it actually sat um in my heart and it monitored all of the pressures and everything in terms of how things pumping. And so post-transplant, they're doing a lot of that too, um, in terms of monitoring all of that and making sure that everything looked all right. Um, and what they don't tell you is post-transplant, you actually still have a pacemaker. Um, it's just outside of your body. So they have this little pacemaker that is outside of your body, and then the wires run into your body. So you can look and see exactly like there's a bandage over it, but like these wires that are going into your body. Watching them pull those out is stressful. Um, but um yeah, so I mean, like we go those 13 days and then we start our recovery in Cleveland on March 7th of 2025. I get back to Orlando. Um, at that point in time, I'm going back and forth to Cleveland once a month for about six months for me to do my my post transplant with them. I had to do a year in Cleveland and then very recently moved my care down to Miami. So now it's a now it's a car ride for me. Um but yeah, it was uh quite a quite quite an ordeal there. And then in October, um, November, excuse me, of 2025 to bring this back to sports. I started to uh I went back to the G League uh with the Osceola Magic and broadcasted that season with them, um, as well as some other events for uh the NBA G League. So I did probably about 40 games this year, 45 games this year. Um, but that's that's most of it. That's that that's most of it.
SPEAKER_09That's uh well, you know, the the book has a million titles. And if you need help, uh I'll write the forward or whatever. I need to, you know. Um, Nikki, it's it's amazing. And um we got just a couple of minutes for you have to to cut cut you loose. It's just but every day you probably wake up and go, Well, my feet hit the ground today, it's a pretty good day, right? I mean, it's just incredible. Um, and and again, you feel the feigning spell's gone, everything's gone, you're back to are you running and and back to just doing flights?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I ran four miles on Monday. Um, I'm not winning any marathons or any foot races. I'm not as quick as I'm gonna do it. No, no, no. You've already won. You've already win.
SPEAKER_10That's the point.
SPEAKER_06That's a good point. But um, yeah, no, I mean I'm exercising. Um, I mean, the biggest thing for someone my age, of course, now is is getting length out of this. The average heart transplant is uh quote unquote good for about 13 years. That's what the data says. And so uh for someone like me, it's about eating right, it's about exercising, um unforced errors. You know, you talk about that in a football game and a tennis match. Um, life for me is a lot about unforced errors moving forward. And so, you know, you got to make the right choices so you can uh maximize the amount of time that I have on this one before I have to get another one, perhaps.
SPEAKER_09Well, I owe you an apology as a friend, but I owe him an apology because as I said, there were gaps where I missed all this until then when I saw it and then I reacted. Nikki, it's uh it's great to catch up. Maybe in a couple of weeks we'll come back and I don't know, we'll get a health check from you or something. I'll have you co-host the show with Bud. I mean, I can take some vacation because uh you're a longtime radio guy and uh back to work. And uh, I just uh I love the story and and uh congratulations. I mean it's uh it's a heck of a story, and I know but Bud and I are gonna talk about this for quite some time. So anyway, it's good to see you and uh thanks for uh thanks for sharing. And man oh man, I'm glad you're on the opposite side of the window today. So I appreciate that.
SPEAKER_06Just one one last thing before I go, guys. Um, you know, obviously I waited 65 days. There are a lot of people that wait a lot a lot longer. Um, if you have the ability to become an organ donor, um, you know, there are people waiting for donors every single day. I have a good friend that's waiting for a kidney right now.
SPEAKER_09His name is Nick Grenowitz uh from uh from Florida and the voice of the Oceola G League Magic. So we'll come back with more NSB Radio Network fostering friends. But now wrap up.
SPEAKER_02Hi, this is Bud Foster for Envision. For over 30 years, my good friends, Dr. Scott and Becky Mann, have built a practice that truly cares about their patients.
SPEAKER_00I can just remember being pregnant with my first son over 30 years ago, and we bought the practice from Dr. Henry Stewart, who'd had it for 50 years, which is scary, but we've moved forward and we're actually in the same location, and now we're up to seven doctors and over 25 staff in the two locations.
SPEAKER_08The technology is amazing. Uh we used to take pictures on literally Polaroids, and now we went to digital, and now we have widescreens, and um, we can do things today that 10 years ago were only images you could only generate maybe at a teaching hospital. And now we can do those chair side when our patients come in.
SPEAKER_02Go see your award winning Envision team. They have two locations Salem and Christiansburg. They will meet all your eye care needs.
SPEAKER_01Foster and Friends is presented by Envision Eye Care. Find us online at envision2020.com.
SPEAKER_09Welcome back. It's Foster and Friends on the NSB Radio Network. I'm still emotional, I think would be the best word. Nikki has been a friend for a long time and a former producer of a golf show we did here. But and but you I know you've touched on it before, but you get emotional and talking about your AFib thing and what you went through laying on a table where your heart is going crazy. And I know this this story meant something to you as well.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, you talk about he was on AFib 2.0, you know, or whatever it was. And uh no, but just goes to show you, I mean, just the oh, I mean, uh, number one, a miracle, you know, um, just uh to babe to stay alive. I mean, here he is, you know, they say he's lucky to be alive just when he was alive. And um, but just the way the the the miracle of modern medicine right now, it's just incredible to be able to to go in and have a complete your heart completely removed and replaced with somebody else's and then to function normally and and and um it's just an incredible story. Uh too young, in my opinion, for somebody to you know have to go through that. But um, you know, he made a great point, I think, uh, in this whole thing. Uh, you know, I think it's important to look into, you know, maybe being a you know an organ donor. That's really something that um, you know, we've all known somebody outside of Nick, we've all known somebody else that's needed a liver or a kidney or you know, a lung, whatever it may be. And, you know, just uh but congratulations to him and we just wish him all the best as he as he moves forward.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, I'm gonna follow, uh I'll follow up with him, and he's talking about the update and when he meets the family. So uh actually we may do be doing another story with him very, very soon, depending on how soon he gets to meet the family where the uh where the heart came from for sure. One real quick question to you before we leave. At the time that you were going through it too, um, how emotional was it for you and the abilities that like you had to change some things, right? To get your heart rate and to get, you know, get the health uh the at the spot you wanted to be.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean it was it was uh it was um it was interesting because my heart rate was like I said, I was over 200 beats a minute and they couldn't they couldn't get it down, and finally they did, and I'm on some good meds. Luckily, I haven't had any major issues uh since then, but I have to go see my cardiologist on a regular basis and and do the stress tests and do those kind of things, and and and but I'm still on medication and uh but I'm I'm living a normal life and and that's a good thing right now. And luckily uh I was able to catch mine early, and I didn't have as much damage or anything done to my heart as like uh you know Nikki had.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, with your well, with your knee replacing, hip replacement, you got more stitches than a baseball. So anyway. All right, that's fostering friends uh for this week. We hope everybody has a great weekend, and uh, we'll certainly talk to you next week because that's what we do. Bud, good to see you. We'll talk soon. Have a great weekend, my friend. All right, for Bud Foster, I'm Mac McDonald, and that is Fostering Friends and the NSP Radio Network.
SPEAKER_01Foster and Friends is presented by Envision. Locations are in Christiansburg in Salem, Virginia. For the best in eye care and fashion, it's Envision. By the River City Distillery in Radford, makers of Win Vodka. It's a good day to enjoy a win. And buy Brick House Pizza. Brick House Pizza means good times.
SPEAKER_05I would take a trip to Cleveland, Ohio, and uh never, never, never leave um until I got a new heart. They did a workup on me. I thought that I was there to see some electrophysiologists to have another procedure. They deemed that procedure was not necessary because my heart wasn't gonna make it much longer.
