This is the final part in a three-part series.
The doctors had trained Trey Schwab not to get too excited when he was told for the first time that there is a pair of lungs available for him. The doctors usually told Schwab that he could expect three to four false alarms for various reasons.
So on February 16, 2004, after an arduous year of waiting, Schwab was not all that enthused when he got a call from the hospital in Madison, telling him to come right away because the doctors had a pair of lungs with his name on them.
Okay, maybe he was a little pumped.
"I was trying to keep an even keel, but yeah, you're excited. They wouldn't be calling if there wasn't a chance of something happening," Schwab said. "At the same time, there's a chance it's not going to happen, too."
Schwab left his home in Milwaukee around 5:30 that evening and got to within 30 miles of the hospital when his cell phone rang.
On the other end of the line was a nurse, who informed Schwab that it didn't look as if his lungs were going to come, and that he should probably just turn around and go home.
Lungs are the hardest organ to transplant. They become unstable very quickly, leak fluid and get infections in a matter of a few hours.
Whereas three in four people can be kidney or liver donors, and one in two people can be heart donors, only one out of every five people can be lung donors.
"There's a much higher degree of uncertainty with lungs," Love said.
Having turned around to head back to Milwaukee, Schwab was disappointed but not really surprised.
That is, until his cell phone lit up a second time. Schwab was just one mile from his home.
"A 608 area code came up, so I had a pretty good idea it was someone from the hospital," Schwab said. "I thought they were just calling to check up on me."
The nurse on the other end of the line was interested in checking up on Schwab, but wanted to do so in person at the hospital, because it seemed that the lungs were going to come through after all.
Once again, Schwab turned around and made the 90-mile trek back toward Madison.
He finally checked into the hospital around 11:30 p.m., and spent the rest of the night thinking of what the next day would bring.
*****
After 40 minutes of continuous CPR, Schwab's heart had become swollen because it did not have enough blood to provide itself with sufficient energy to work.
The level of oxygen in Schwab's blood was below 12 percent, so low that Dr. Robert Love could not detect it through mixed venous saturation, the process used to determine such oxygen levels. The normal oxygen level of blood is 97-98 percent.
But a funny thing happened when Schwab was taken off the bypass machine.
"His heart ended up being very strong," Love said.
Apparently, the disease that had been tormenting Schwab's body for the past two-and-a-half years had preconditioned his heart to handle difficult predicaments. In other words, his heart was used to not having a lot of oxygen to work with.
"It was something that defies scientific explanation," Love said. "We all did our work and gave our expertise, but this is still next to impossible with him having just come out of transplant surgery."
*****
On his way into surgery the morning of February 17, 2004, Schwab was surrounded by familiar faces.
There were his parents, who had flown overnight in a private plane from Oklahoma. There were Tom Crean and Denny Kuiper, Marquette's academic adviser. There was Love, the man who would deliver Schwab from the life-threatening disease that had plagued him for so long.
As Schwab closed his eyes the final time before the sedative kicked in, he remembers just hoping that everything would go well.
"This is your set," Love told Schwab before beginning the surgery. "These are meant for you. It's a good set of lungs; everything fits. You're running out of time, so it's time to do this."
By this time, the blood pressure in Schwab's lungs had reached very high levels, making it almost impossible for his heart to pump blood through both lungs.
As a result, Love placed Schwab on a heart/lung machine, the same machine used in open-heart surgery.
Once the blood pressure in the lungs stabilized, Love spent the next seven hours replacing Schwab's old, disease-stricken lungs with new, healthy lungs.
The surgery, itself, went off without a hitch.
Schwab was pretty sick for a few days after the surgery, which was expected. Love kept Schwab on a ventilator for about a week, and gave his patient Heparin, a medicine that was to keep clots from forming in Schwab's blood system.
Everything was going according to plan. Love was even considering moving Schwab out of the ICU on Monday, March 1.
But in the words of Trey Schwab, that's when all the rules changed.
*****
After Love had made sure there were no more clots to be removed, he sewed Schwab up and put him on an anticoagulant medication derived from cobra venom called Hirudin.
"That's not something we usually use on patients who just came out of surgery," Love said. "There's a very high risk of the patient bleeding to death if the medication gets out of control, and with this stuff, once it's in, you can't take it out. You have to wait for it to metabolize through the liver and kidneys to get it out of the body."
Love couldn't use Heparin anymore, and he had to keep clots from forming, so he went with the only medication he had left. This time, there were no complications.
Schwab remained unconscious in his bed for five days after the surgery. During that time, he had many visitors — some prayed, some just kept watch in silence.
"I was screaming at him because he couldn't just hear. We knew he couldn't hear regular things, and we just wanted to see him open his eyes," Crean said. "It was not to hear him talk. It was not to get a smile. It was to see those eyes open, and to have him respond to your voice, that way we would all know that there wasn't brain damage. Everyone in that room will remember it as long as they live."
On Friday, March 5, 2004, Schwab opened his eyes, and for the first time in two-and-a-half years, it looked as if things were going to get better.
Schwab remained in the ICU for 10 more days and was released from the hospital on the last Sunday of March in 2004.
He remembers that day, partly because he held a press conference at the hospital that following Monday, but more because the Golden Eagles had an NIT game that Tuesday night versus Boise State.
Schwab wasn't on the sideline for that one, but he was holding court up in one of the suites at the Bradley Center where he was joined by many of the nurses and doctors who had taken care of him along the way.
*****
Recovery from those damaging clots was a long process, one that Schwab gladly went through in order to get back to being his old self.
Over the summer of 2004, Schwab had to return to physical rehab to get his lungs and legs in shape by spending numerous hours on that familiar treadmill.
The goal was to get back in time for the start of school in the fall, but what Schwab relished the most was the thought of basketball season starting up.
"More than anything else, I remember Midnight Madness at the McGuire Center," Schwab said. "It was just good to be back, walking out there with no oxygen tank for the first time in three years. It was pretty special."
That whole year was special for Schwab, being able to watch his boys play live instead of from the constrictions of a hospital bed.
But toward the end of the year, people began to talk to Schwab about doing something more full time in the organ donation field.
"I was kicking it around in my head a little bit, and the hospital in Madison was recruiting me a little bit," Schwab said.
Recruiting it was. The University of Wisconsin-Madison hospital was offering Schwab the newly created position "outreach coordinator."
Schwab came back to Marquette and spoke with Crean about the matter.
"It was bittersweet, but I knew he needed to do something to keep prolonging where he was going in his life," Crean said. "A couple of years ago, if he had tried to leave, I'd have locked the door, barred him from it and hid his keys. We'd have never let him leave because things weren't in order then. Things are in order now for him. I don't mean for us. Things are in order for him."
And so, in August of 2005, Schwab joined the same staff that had saved his life, hoping to return the favor to someone else in need of an organ transplant.
"Sometimes the Lord puts us in position and opens the door for us," Schwab said. "It's our job to walk through it."
Schwab now spends his days speaking at events to promote organ donation and working to make it easier for people to become organ donors.
"There's no question; he's the epitome of devotion," Crean said. "He's devoted to a cause, and that's why he's going to do so well with his job now. He's devoted to people, just like he was devoted to the team. He's an outstanding human being."
Even the man that gave Schwab new life marvels at how his patient could turn out so well.
"The fact that he's survived this with complete body function, more determination to live life to the fullest, and the desire to make maximum use of his time and talents to help as many people as he can is amazing," Love said. "He has been an outstanding spokesman for organ donation."
He's pretty special.