LIBERTY HILL, Texas (KXAN) — Brandon Ring worried about his breathing. Over a few days, he noticed it was growing harder to take in air. His wife, Courtney, asked him to go get checked out.
A few hours later, his pulse skyrocketed and this his blood pressure dropped to zero.
“All in all, he was dead, so to speak, coded for a good 90 seconds,” Courtney Ring said.
Brandon said that the ordeal, which would eventually lead to a full heart transplant, was “surprising and unexpected.” He thought he was in relatively good health. He didn’t know that parts of his heart were nearly completely blocked.
According to the Mayo Clinic, early signs of heart disease include shortness of breath, plus cold feelings in the legs and arms.
Courtney said that in the days leading up to the incident, Brandon, who works at home, was constantly cold. He would bundle up and use heaters while his family, including two boys, were warm.
“Dead” for 90 seconds
In November 2023, Brandon went to get an EKG at the local clinic after experiencing days of shortness of breath. Doctors told him to go the ER immediately after seeing the results. He went home, grabbed Courtney, then went to the ER.
“Within like being admitted within 10 minutes, my heart coded — just stopped working completely,” Brandon said.
“It looks almost like an out of body experience to where Brandon was laying just about flat. There was a slight incline on the gurney, and where he was sitting all the way up,” Courtney said. “He got incredibly sweaty, he got incredibly strong as he was putting every bit of energy in to try to breathe and get oxygen you know, throughout his body.”
Doctors were able to bring him back. Brandon gave his wife a thumbs up upon waking, unaware of what happened.
Brandon was taken to surgery where he was given two stints in his heart. Doctors discovered during the surgery his heart was not in good condition. A transplant would likely be in his future.
The road to a heart transplant
A heart transplant, Dr. Jonathan Yang with Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgeons in Austin said, is a surgery of last resort. Doctors first wanted to try to get Brandon’s heart to work on its own.
However, he began to experience V-Tach, a precursor to a heart attack. “I was experiencing these — about probably 30 to 40 of them in this month-and-a-half timeframe,” Brandon said.
Trying to calm these rhythms, doctors put Brandon on ECMO.
“(ECMO) is essentially a slimmed down version of the heart lung machine that we use for open heart surgery in the operating room,” Dr. Yang said.
The machine takes blood from the body, adds oxygen, then places the blood back. It does this while bypassing the heart and lungs, giving them a chance to heal.
“ECMO was something just to get him through to the next day, and to the next two days, and to the next three days,” Courtney said. Brandon stayed on ECMO for a month and a half.
At this point, doctors decided Brandon would need a new heart. He was transferred to a hospital in San Antonio for the surgery, one where Dr. Yang worked.
Dr. Yang was able to get Brandon in to the hospital. Many hospitals, he said, won’t accept ECMO patients. A special ambulance is actually needed to transport these patients because of the size of the machine.
Four months after the initial episode, in February, Brandon received a heart transplant. Dr. Yang, who had helped with Brandon since the beginning, was able to perform the surgery.
Heart transplant and the world after
Brandon is returning to normal following the surgery. He is now at home in Liberty Hill with his two young boys. “It’s very surreal to know that I have somebody else’s organ inside of me keeping me alive,” Brandon said.
“Being able to walk through the front door of my own house, sleeping in my own bed, see my kids on a daily basis help out with what I need to at the house is an amazing experience.”
Courtney, who spent months sleeping in hotels and at the hospital while her in-laws looked after the boys, is thankful for all the doctors and hospital staff who saved her husband.
“We actually celebrated 14 years of marriage on May 23. So he got home in time for that. That was probably the best anniversary we’ve had so far,” she said.