Glen Gondrezick poses with his jerseys in his home last month. As he sped toward the operating room, Gondo was pulled over several times.
Gondrezick prepares to have blood drawn at his home. His size, 6-foot-7, 250 pounds, is a big reason why he's still waiting for transplant surgery, because finding a match is difficult.
Sun Archives
- Gondo's aching heart (4-11-2008)
- Gondo back home, still waiting on heart (4-7-2008)
- Findlay raises almost $25K to help Gondo (4-1-2008)
Beyond the Sun
Though I’m not exactly sure what constitutes cruel and unusual punishment as defined by the U.S. Constitution, I now think I can write my own meaning.
Cruel is being told the donor heart you need to keep you alive is on its way to the hospital. Cruel is racing like mad across the desert with the highest of hopes. Cruel is being strapped onto the gurney so the operation can begin — only to be told that the heart, the most vital of organs, that would let you walk up stairs and play ball with your son and give back your life, was only slightly less defective than the one you have.
Unusual is the person who can find the will and strength to go on after such a devastating emotional setback, which is what Glen Gondrezick is trying to do today. He’s on his way home, and that’s bad news. The heart transplant at UCLA Medical Center he thought was a 90 percent certainty Wednesday evening was indefinitely postponed in the wee hours of Thursday morning when that damn 10 percent reared its ugly head.
The donor heart had developed an arrhythmia, or irregular heartbeat. It never even made it to the hospital.
“We’re back to Day One,” said Bonnie Griffin, the mother of Gondo’s longtime friend Tammy, who accompanied her daughter to Los Angeles to provide emotional support for the UNLV basketball legend and broadcast analyst.
Day One is not good, especially when today is Day 35 since Gondo was moved to the top of the waiting list of those who need a new heart to prolong their lives.
Before the false alarm, having the rug yanked out from under him and whatever other metaphor one might use for having his hopes crushed like a tin can, he was absolutely ecstatic.
First, a little back story. A person in Gondrezick’s condition, as you might imagine, practically has a cell phone surgically attached to his ear, and virtually every time I have spoken with him since he went public with his condition during the Mountain West tournament in March, somebody would buzz in.
But not UCLA. It was never The Call. Never the voice on the other end telling him to grab his toothbrush and get his big butt out there because they had found a heart as strong as an ox’s to replace the one that had betrayed him.
I was sitting at Gondo’s kitchen table last week. His nurse was changing dressings and making sure the IV tubes that transport the medicine that has been keeping him alive were clear and snug when his phone rang. He showed me the digital readout.
Not UCLA.
A little before 11 on Wednesday morning, his phone rang again.
This time, it was UCLA. And it wasn’t a reminder about his tests next week.
It was The Call.
The timing couldn’t have been better. When the phone rang, Gondo was trying to arrange for an airplane or a helicopter that could get him to UCLA on short notice, because he had taken a turn for the worse. He had spent Sunday night in the hospital. When I talked to him Tuesday, he did not sound well. Or good. The jokes and the one-liners that have helped him through this ordeal, or at least to not think about it as much, weren’t as frequent.
But you should have heard his voice after The Call.
“I’m so excited. You can hear how fired up I am,” Gondo said.
It sounded like he had gotten straight A’s on his report card, and he’s 52.
Gondo called three more times before he got to L.A.
The first time, he wanted to know whether I knew anybody at the Nevada Highway Patrol, because he had to get there in a hurry. There’s only a small window after doctors find a heart in which it can be transplanted, and a police escort seemed like a good idea.
The second time, he called to complain that I apparently didn’t know anybody at the Highway Patrol. He had just put Baker, Calif., in the rearview mirror and had been pulled over twice for speeding.
Wait a minute. Did he just say he had been pulled over twice? Was he driving himself to have a heart transplant?
Iron Man, meet Glen Gondrezick.
“I’m goin’ 120 miles per hour,” Gondo said. “Tammy and her friend don’t like to drive fast.”
The third time he called, he was riding shotgun in an L.A. County Police Department Chevy Suburban. The sheriff himself had sent it for him. The sheriff’s bodyguard, Eli Vera, was driving Gondo to a heliport. At a high rate of speed.
“Listen to this,” Gondo said as Vera blared the siren and got on the Suburban’s public address system to announce to the citizens of Los Angeles that there was an emergency and they were comin’ through.
Gondo said the citizens of Los Angeles were obediently pulling their SUVs off to the shoulder.
“You’re O.J.,” I told him.
Gondo repeated what I said to Vera. Both men roared. They sounded like two kids riding a roller coaster at Six Flags.
“This is absolutely awesome,” Gondo said before hanging up.
He didn’t sound like a guy who was on his way to have a heart transplant.
He sounded like a guy whose heart was beating a million times a minute.
Now all he can do is pray it keeps beating while he waits for Another Call.
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