Photo courtesy Syncardia A closeup of the CardioWest temporary Total Artificial Heart, which kept Bill Wohl alive for 159 days.

Since that first world-class competition, Wohl has been a fixture not only on the American transplant athletics scene, but also at the World Transplant Games – first in Nancy, France, in 2003, then in Ontario, Canada, in 2005. In 2007, Wohl traveled with the American team to Bangkok, where he took home a silver medal for cycling, plus two silvers and a bronze for swimming.

Last year, Stan and Paula Brady accompanied Wohl to Pittsburgh for the U.S. Transplant Games. His donor’s parents joined him on the medal stand as Wohl earned three golds and a silver medal in the swimming events.

“What I’m most proud of is, I got a note from Paula,” Wohl explains. “She wrote that she’s so thankful to have me as a member of their family.”

Stan, Brady Michaels’ father, also has lavish praise for Wohl.

“I think Bill has done us all very proud,” he says. “I think if [Mike] could have written a script, he would have written it just this way, because Bill is… exactly the same type of caring person that my son was.”

Caring for others is one more way Wohl has changed from the business wizard who once judged his life’s bottom line solely in terms of dollars. While he’s still in the audio/video business, he’s long since cut back on his hours. Now, not only has his athletic career raised in priority but so has his volunteer work and philanthropy.

The Bill Wohl Foundation was formed in 2002 to raise funds for and promote awareness of organ donation. That summer, Wohl says he hatched another idea he’d seen other states do with some success – the sale of “Donate Life” license plates to promote organ donation. After a long slog through the Arizona political process, they’re now a reality. The plates cost $25, with $17 of that fee going toward a special organ transplantation fund. The total raised in the past few years? About $200,000, Wohl estimates.

The years since his transplant haven’t been one medal-winning moment after another, however. In 2002, Wohl’s marriage ended. And 2009 has been nothing short of hell thanks to a wicked little fungus known as aspergillus.

According to his doctors, Wohl’s extreme outdoor training regimen­ must have exposed him to floating spores, which typically reside in soil or plants. Wohl’s exposure was compounded by the $200-a-day meds he’s been prescribed. Simply put, when you take upwards of 50 pills a day to prevent your body from rejecting your donated heart, you’re vulnerable to infection. Much like its cousin, Valley fever, Wohl’s strain of aspergillosis has the potential to be deadly. It not only has curtailed his training for months on end, but it’s left him feeling “like a dishrag” for the better part of the year. Still, it hasn’t shaken his resolve, or the faith of his coach, DeeAnn Smith of Gorilla Multisport Performance.

“I have to hand it to him, because he takes everything in stride,” Smith says. “He’s very, very good at being Bill. He knows his situation and he deals with it like a champ.... A bad situation presents itself and he doesn’t whine about it. He says, ‘I’m going to do this, this and this to overcome the situation.’… He’s grown as an athlete by bounds since I’ve known him.”

Reinfeld, the doctor who has cared for both of the human hearts that have beaten inside Wohl in the past 10 years, can’t help talking about the literal organs without talking about the metaphorical center of his patient. He’s seen Wohl’s heart up close, in every aspect possible.

“Talk about people who have changed their lives and turned it around,” says the cardiologist, “people who wake up and say, ‘Oh my God, there’s more to life than the rat race.’ He was living the high life.… Now, after all this, I think he has a different appreciation on life. He’s been given a gift, and he’s literally run with it.”

And biked with it. And swam stroke after stroke with it.

With the fungal ailment beginning to recede, Wohl has allowed himself to think ahead lately. There’s more money to raise, more organ donors to solicit, more medals to take home. There’s the 2010 U.S. Transplant Games in Madison, Wisconsin, and the 2011 World Games in Göteborg, Sweden. Ten more years of “shelf life” is what he’s aiming for, Wohl says. He’d like to add to the medal collection that dominates his living room, and, more importantly, continue to pay tribute to the man who made those awards possible.

While Bill Wohl has only come in contact with the smallest part of Brady Michaels, it would be unfair to say they’ve never communicated. We’ll never know what the absent man in this story would think of it all, but some mornings it seems possible to make an educated guess.

“I’ve got kind of a little partnership going with him,” Wohl says, referring to the man whose heart he carries. “Sometimes, when I go up into the mountains or when I’m really tired, I’ll carry on little conversations with him. I’ve never gotten any replies back, but I do get feelings and thoughts. Brady’s parents are positive that when I ride, he’s there on my shoulders. I guess he’s keeping an eye on me.”

DONATE LIFE
Arizonans can become registered organ, tissue and cornea donors by signing up at DonateLifeAZ.org or by calling 1-800-94-DONOR.