When Blueridge resident Brett Third gets to Spain this summer to play competitive golf he’ll discuss strategy and tactics with his teammates and perhaps even trade barbs with opponents.
But before too long the conversation will likely turn to more pressing matters: the intricacies of his heart – and the medications necessary to keep it alive, well and ticking.
Given the exclusive club he’s part of, the shop talk is not surprising. And it won’t be a stretch if the liver, kidneys and lungs find their way into the discourse as well.
Like many throughout the world, Third is the recipient of an organ transplant – a new heart he received three and a half years ago after living with congestive heart failure for several years previously.
Third, who divides his time between Blueridge and Whistler, is also an athlete. Despite his past health challenges, he’s eager to showcase his athletic and competitive verve at this year’s World Transplant Games June 25 to July 2 in Malaga, a Mediterranean port city located on Spain’s southern coast.
The games have a simple message for the world: demonstrating the benefits of successful organ transplants through recipients participating in full athletic competitions.
Drawing attention to the importance of organ donation is another equally significant goal. The host city will be alive and brimming with picturesque views when transplant athletes from across the world arrive this June for the 21st summer games, ready to compete in 14 sports, including basketball, golf, cycling and track and field. But alongside Spain’s stunning scenes this summer, another scene will be taking place among the transplant athletes – many of whom are now good friends.
“You can’t imagine how excited I am,” Third says about this year’s games as well as reconnecting with his transnational pack of transplant pals. “You’ve got something in common. You’ve been through the same things. … To have somebody that you can talk to that’s having the same experience as you – it doesn’t happen every day.”
Third first competed as a golfer in the transplant games in Argentina back in 2015. It was a physically and mentally challenging pursuit for him to get there in the first place.
On Halloween morning seven years ago, Third was getting ready to go exercise, when all of a sudden he just “dropped.”
“They took me to Lions Gate but I didn’t get out of the ambulance there because the doctors realized I needed to get to St. Paul’s right away. … The left side of my heart atrophied. We tried several things to get that back,” Third explains.
For the next five years, Third, alongside his family and doctors, tried everything possible to restore his heart’s functionality and avoid a transplant. But it all proved ineffectual.
“Quality of life was pretty poor. In fact, I don’t remember it,” Third says about the sense of delirium his illness caused.
After much consultation, Third underwent a heart transplant procedure on Sept. 19, 2013. After more than a year of adjusting to his new heart and the multitude of drugs he was taking, things started to change. He could suddenly think clearer and had more energy.
“It was fairly quickly that I started feeling like I could think straight again,” he says.
Organ transplant recipients, specifically ones who have received a new heart, are encouraged to exercise and move around – but it has to be done with care. He participated in a cardiac rehabilitation program called Healthy Heart at St. Paul’s that’s partly designed to get patients exercising again.
“I wouldn’t have been confident to do what I did without (the St. Paul’s staff),” Third insists. “I had it in my mind that I was going to golf and that was it. That was a thing I was going to be able to do.”
Just as pressing on Third’s mind, however, was – and is – his insistence on giving back to the transplant community following his own brush with heart problems.
He’s currently the treasurer for the Heart Transplant Home Society, an organization that provides housing and helps remove financial barriers for people waiting for heart transplants in B.C.
Third was on the waitlist for five months for his own transplant and wanted to make sure those in more dire financial situations were less burdened during that long waiting period, one where patients are often forced to relocate in order to be close to the hospital.
“I went right away to the doctors and said, ‘Well, what am I going to do here? How am I going to give back?’” says Third, who is now retired from his role as longtime president of Empire Dynamic Structures, which creates amusement rides for major theme parks including Universal Studios and Disney, as well as some of the largest observatory telescopes in the world.
In April, Third raised $15,000 for the Home Society by throwing a whisky tasting event in Whistler.
When he returns from this year’s transplant games, he intends to get more involved in transplant charities and organizations at the provincial and national level. For the time being though, he’s focused on his golf swing.
“It takes a while,” he says about getting back into the groove of things, both on the golf course and in his everyday life.
He says he’ll give it his all this summer when competing in Spain, but he’s not nervous about it. He just wants to support his friends, new and old, in the transplant community.
“That’s all that’s important to me, to go and hug everybody again.”
