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brown and looks like a pizza. It was round and misshapen because of over- working, and when they took it out and put it in this stainless steel thing, it just looked like a three-meat pan pizza." Millen's need for the heart transplant was brought about by a condition known as amyloidosis. The condition derives its name from a protein known as an amy- loid. It multiplies, sticks together and is deposited in the liver, kidneys, spleen, heart, tissues, nerves and other places in the body that then become diseased. Amyloidosis mimics other diseases and can be treated by chemotherapy but is in- curable. About 4,500 new cases are diag- nosed annually, according to The Amyloidosis Foundation. "I never heard of it and didn't know it existed," Millen said. "More than half the doctors I went to didn't even consider it, never thought of it. They thought I had some digestive problems because my stomach was messed up. I was feeling it in my stomach. Amyloidosis majors in one organ and minors in the rest of them. So it majored in my heart and affected my digestive system, my kidneys, my liver, all those things to a much smaller degree. It affected my heart so much I gained water weight. I'd stand on a scale, weigh 285 and wonder why because I wasn't eating any- thing. Then my legs would blow up like you wouldn't believe." Millen is a workaholic and self-de- scribed health nut. While exercising in 2011 he felt chest pains. Heart tests were negative. So were tests for severe acid re- flux and Lyme disease. In 2015, he passed a kidney stone. A year later, he had surgery for a nonmalignant tumor in his chest. Slowly, over the years, the pains increased in his stomach and his stamina weakened as he began to see a series of doctors. "I first went to St. Luke's [University Hospital] in Bethlehem and Lehigh Valley [Hospital in Allentown]," Millen said. "Then I went to down to Penn. After that I went out to L.A. to Cedars-Sinai and another hospital whose name I can't re- member. I went to seven or eight different places." Dr. Gary Lee at the Mayo Clinic in Jack- sonville, Minn., was the first to diagnose Millen's condition, in July 2017, and also the first to tell him he needed a heart transplant. Millen didn't believe it and sought another opinion. He went to New York to consult with one of the most re- spected authorities in the field of cardio- vascular research, Dr. Matthew Maurer, at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center. There, Millen was told he needed a transplant, and soon. But bad news to Millen is the cue for his whimsical sense of humor to take control of his mind and mouth. Here is how he describes the con- versation with Maurer. MAURER There's a guy right here in Newark who can do the surgery. MILLEN Newark? Delaware? MAURER No, Newark, New Jersey. MILLEN New Jersey? It's a freaking dump! MAURER There's a great hospital there. They do the fourth-most heart trans- plants in the country. MILLEN You're kidding me! That's how Millen came to meet Dr. Mark Zucker and spend nearly three months in Newark at the Beth Israel Med- ical Center hospital waiting for a new heart. Zucker, the director of the hospi- tal's transplant program, has been in- volved with heart transplants since 1987. "Zucker is phenomenal," Millen said. "It turns out there are five or six guys like him in little pockets of the country." Millen cited the four clinics he visited, plus hospitals in Houston and Stanford, Calif. "It's really a small community. They all know each other and are aware of the latest stuff." In the past five years, the heart trans- plant facilities have been able to increase patient survival rates – from 88 to 91 per- cent after one year and from 75 to 85 per- cent after three years – according to information posted on some of the hos- pital websites. For one of the few times in his adult life, when Millen was admitted to the Beth Is- rael Medical Center on Oct. 1, he had no control over the timing. He had to wait for a donor. In the early morning of Dec. 23, he was told a heart match had been ob- tained from a donor. By 12:30 p.m., he was being prepped. The actual four-hour operation started at 2 a.m. "I was walking the next day," Millen said. Millen was so open about his predica- ment that he allowed a television crew to produce a 26-minute documentary, enti- tled "All Heart," about the surgery for ESPN's "E:60" series. The video is vivid and emotional, including the arrival of the donor's heart in an ambulance and the heart's insertion into Millen's chest. After the surgery, Millen learned the donor was a 26-year-old man from out of state who had died of a drug overdose. He wants to contact the donor's family but for one of the few times in his life he has been procrastinating. "I don't know what to say," Millen said. "Part of me is thankful, but I'm also angry about how he died. He was a healthy kid and very conscientious about social things because he was a card-carrying donor. But then he does drugs and dies. I don't get that. I've thought about it and I came close one time. I said to [my wife] Pat, 'How do I start this letter?' What do you say?" Getting back to work As he recovered from the transplant in the weeks following the surgery, Millen eagerly resumed his normal daily routine. "I'm a very simple person in terms of how I look at things, pretty pragmatic," he said. "I'm just thankful I can do all the lit- tle things that people complain about doing, like cutting the grass and trimming stuff, that I couldn't do at all. Now, I'm happy to do the simple tasks, although I don't have the same energy that I had." Cutting the grass doesn't mean walking behind a small push mower in the front and backyard of his home. Although he has an employee who helps him run the 200- acre property he owns in the Allentown area, Millen walks behind a large industrial mower to cut the prime five acres of grass. The mower is part of his fleet of construc- tion equipment, including a back hoe, a skid steer, a dump truck, a brush hog and P E N N S T A T E F O O T B A L L >>

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