Amy Sherald Quotes

The doctor told Phil, my then husband, that my condition was really bad news. They had found an artery tearing and said I could die. They said they could try to patch it up but it could go horribly wrong. It all turned out okay in the end but it was touch and go.

I had internal bleeding with blood clots on the brain. I was completely blind and deaf. I had a heart attack and a stroke.

I was in end stage heart failure, liver and kidneys shutting down, and on an emergency basis they went in and planted a pump in my chest. It was battery operated. That kept me alive for 20 months and that got me to the transplant. And I wake up every morning now with a smile on my face, thankful for the gift of another day I never expected to see.

I had to have a complete liver transplant.

Living with a single kidney is almost exactly like living with two; the remaining kidney expands to take up the slack. (When kidneys fail, they generally fail together; barring trauma or cancer, there's not much advantage to a backup.) The main risk to the donor is the risk of any surgery.

The damage that the human body can survive these days is as awesome as it is horrible: crushing, burning, bombing, a burst blood vessel in the brain, a ruptured colon, a massive heart attack, rampaging infection. These conditions had once been uniformly fatal.

In 2003, I almost died of an intestinal blockage when I was on a mountain in Chile, filming a segment for 'Scientific American Frontiers.'

I was so unhealthy as a child, and at least three or four times my parents were told to get ready, that I would not make it.

I nearly died of double bronchial pneumonia at the age of five.

I was in kidney failure. I ended up having a kidney transplant on my 21st birthday.

I was in a coma for five days - I was dead longer than Jesus before he was raised from the dead.

Serkin was so sick he almost died for three days.

I spent Christmas and the next thirty days in the hospital.

My heart stopped twice. They had to stab me to drain the blood from my lungs because I was drowning in my own blood.

Five to six thousand people die every year waiting for organs, but nobody cares.

I've got to worry about Alonzo Mourning, because a year or two ago there was a chance that Alonzo Mourning wouldn't be standing here talking to you. That's the cold reality of it.

The artificial heart is very effective as a bridge to transplant, but the number of people that can be saved with human hearts is limited. A perfect artificial heart could save many more patients.

I had actually hurt my neck, and because I went a while without getting it taken care of - it was pushing up against the back of my heart - and because I have heart issues, they thought it was this whole big deal. So I spent a good three days in the hospital, two nights in the ICU.

In the case of my husband, we found that facing a life-threatening illness prodded us to make a dramatic change in our lives.

My dad had a stroke. It's one of those life-changing events. It was right around the time I was turning 40. We were doing 'L.A. Law,' and I got this call that my dad was in Rome and had had a stroke. I want to stress that it wasn't a huge stroke, but it was enough to provide a serious wake-up call.

Post-operatively the transplanted kidney functioned immediately with a dramatic improvement in the patient's renal and cardiopulmonary status.

I couldn't breathe. I - I went into - literally, my kidneys stopped functioning. They stopped, you know, processing the fluid that was starting to build up in my body.

When my little son, Prince, had health issues as a baby, we were told that he had a 20 percent chance of survival.

My success in transplanting arteries between animals has pioneered surgical techniques that being closer the day when hearts and other organs will be transplanted into humans. No effort should be spared to reach this goal.

My daughter couldn't wake me up, so they called 911. They rushed me to the hospital. They drilled a hole in my head and wrapped a coil around my brain. I was unconscious for a week, and I was in rehab for two months - couldn't walk, couldn't talk. Now I've relearned everything. I'm so happy.