SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Retired Kings player Scot Pollard has been on a long road of recovery and healing after receiving a heart transplant back in February.
He spoke with ABC10 about meeting his donor’s family recently – and the mission they now share.
“I am very grateful to be alive. I keep waking up,” Pollard said.
Standing six feet, 11 inches tall, Pollard did not have a heart easy to replace, but he needed a new one—and didn’t have much time.
“I didn't have months left. I probably didn't have weeks left,” he said.
Pollard played college ball for the Kansas Jayhawks, was drafted 19th into the NBA and spent 11 years in the league with several teams - including five seasons with the Sacramento Kings, from ’98 to ‘03.
However, a heart defect runs in his family.
“I was 16 when my dad died on the heart transplant list, and my son was 16 when I got my heart transplant surgery,” Pollard said.
At age 48, Pollard needed a new heart; his energy was dropping quickly.
“It was rough,” he said, pausing. “I sorry, I'm emotional about it, but I just - I just remember just going, ‘I'm done. I don't want to do this. I don't want to get out of bed.’ That was a low point.”
On February 16 - four days after his 49th birthday, which he spent in the ICU at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville – Pollard received a heart.
“Casey is my donor's name, and he's a big dude. He was 6’3”, and that's - my doctor said - that's about as short as we could go. But his heart is big. It's pumping, it's working,” Pollard said. “I'm very happy that, you know, the family is okay and they're still processing. Of course, they've lost a loved one. It was not expected. He got sick and ended up contracting pneumonia, and he couldn't kick it.”
He calls Casey’s gift bittersweet.
“I mean, how more bittersweet could something be when there's a loss and a new life?” Pollard said.
Pollard, who lives in Indiana, recently met Casey’s family.
“He was a big man and a giver. They said he never met a stranger,” Pollard said.
And Casey’s big heart got even bigger!
“Casey's heart grew in my chest. They measured it,” Pollard said. “I was like, ‘Oh, okay. How often does that happen?’ They're like, ‘Never.’…I said, ‘So how do we explain that?’ They said, ‘Well, um, it's in a king size bed now, and it's just star-fishing.’”
Pollard has four kids, ranging in age from 8 to 26. Doctors tell him-- it’s uncertain exactly how much this new heart will extend his life.
“We just want to keep this heart beating as long as possible, so I'm in a rush to make memories with my family, first and foremost. I'm in a rush to help other people...with whatever I've got left,” Pollard said. “I'd like to say I've got a decade. Casey was only 46, so I've got a 46-year-old heart. That's not old, so it I'm hoping that it ends up that we defy the odds. I'm the tallest dude Vanderbilt ever transplanted. They don't know what's going to happen.”
He's grateful to Casey and his family.
“You know, he didn't get to live a long life, but now I’ve hopefully got to live a long life and carry forward his legacy,” Pollard said.
He and Casey’s family are now advocating for organ donation.
“He helped five people with his corneas, his kidneys, his skin, and I got his heart,” Pollard said.
It’s now a heart on a mission to help save more lives.
Signing up to become an organ donor is quick, easy and free. You can sign up through Donate Life California.
Even if you’ve signed up through the DMV, Pollard said, you can double-check and make sure you’re on the registry at the Donate Life website. There is a national site, too.
Pollard says he also really likes Sierra Donor Services.
Pollard’s father, who died while waiting for a heart, was named Pearl Pollard. In his honor – and to signify how organs are like pearls harvested to save others, Pollard said – Pollard’s wife Dawn is in the process of forming a nonprofit organization called Pearls of Life, to help support the family’s mission of raising awareness about organ donation.
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