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Monday, June 10, 2002 2:04:43 AM
Sunday Special: Doug Goodwin
By HAL BOCK
AP Sports Writer
June 8, 2002
Doug Goodwin spends each day surrounded by bottles of pills, prescription medicines that he pops like gum drops. He swallows 25 of them a day, the regimen required for a man living with someone else's heart in his chest.
``It is a miracle,'' the old fullback said. ``I feel great.''
Then he looks at all that medicine and confesses that as good as he feels after the transplant surgery, there is a flip side to his miracle. The pills come with bills.
The prescriptions cost between $2,000 and $3,000 a month. His insurance provides $500 a year for medication.
``After next month, I'm in big trouble,'' Goodwin said. ``Right now, I'm scared.''
It's not the first time.
Goodwin, who was a reserve on the Bills' 1965 AFL championship team, spent three seasons in the NFL, but played just five games. Knee and shoulder injuries shortened his career.
After football, he became a youth counselor and volunteer coach in Freeport, N.Y. But his health interfered. There were kidney problems and congestive heart failure. He had a pacemaker inserted in 1996 but it was clear that eventually a transplant would be needed.
Goodwin was hooked up to a defibrillator to control his heart rhythm and remembers the device going off seven times. ``It feels like somebody hit you in the chest with a baseball bat,'' he said.
He had been waiting seven months for a new heart, hospitalized in Manhattan's Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. He remembers his room, with a big picture window that looked over the Hudson River. ``I'd watch the sailboats every day,'' he said.
Goodwin is a big man, 6-foot-3, 270 pounds. His size, combined with a rare blood type, complicated the search for a new heart.
Then one night, he was awakened with the news that a heart had been located, that the operation would take place the next morning. He was prepped for the surgery and the heart began its fateful trip.
From Boston to New York City.
On Sept. 11.
At about the same time as the plane carrying Goodwin's new heart took off from Logan Airport on its lifesaving mission, two other jetliners left the same airport, also headed for New York.
At approximately 8:35 a.m., the small plane carrying Goodwin's new heart landed at Teterboro, N.J. Thirteen minutes later, American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Within 15 minutes, United Airlines Flight 175, also bound from Boston, hit the south tower.
Under attack, New York was immediately shut down. Air travel was halted. All bridge and tunnel traffic was stopped.
One of the last planes to land in the metropolitan New York area was the one carrying Doug Goodwin's new heart. The last vehicle to cross the George Washington Bridge before it was closed was the van carrying Doug Goodwin's new heart.
Those are two good reasons why he talks about miracles.
After six hours in surgery, Goodwin awoke. There was a TV in the recovery room and, his mind still hazy from the anesthesia, he tried to comprehend what he was seeing -- the mayhem and confusion that followed the fall of the twin towers.
``I thought it was a remake of the Godzilla movie,'' Goodwin said. ``Then the doctor told me that it was real.''
More like surreal.
In the days after his father's surgery, Doug Goodwin Jr., a defensive tackle at Boston College, was Big East Conference Player of the Week, recording eight tackles and two sacks in a victory over Temple.
``Every snap of the ball, I was thinking about my father,'' he said after the game.
The Bills, too, think about Goodwin. Owner Ralph Wilson has helped him financially and is exploring aid for him through the NFL Players Assistance Fund and Dire Need Fund. Ex-teammates such as Jack Kemp, Ed Rutkowski and Booker Edgerson made personal donations.
And Goodwin thinks of the anonymous donor who gave him another chance at life on a day when so many others died.
]
Breaking Clay Makes My Day!
By HAL BOCK
AP Sports Writer
June 8, 2002
Doug Goodwin spends each day surrounded by bottles of pills, prescription medicines that he pops like gum drops. He swallows 25 of them a day, the regimen required for a man living with someone else's heart in his chest.
``It is a miracle,'' the old fullback said. ``I feel great.''
Then he looks at all that medicine and confesses that as good as he feels after the transplant surgery, there is a flip side to his miracle. The pills come with bills.
The prescriptions cost between $2,000 and $3,000 a month. His insurance provides $500 a year for medication.
``After next month, I'm in big trouble,'' Goodwin said. ``Right now, I'm scared.''
It's not the first time.
Goodwin, who was a reserve on the Bills' 1965 AFL championship team, spent three seasons in the NFL, but played just five games. Knee and shoulder injuries shortened his career.
After football, he became a youth counselor and volunteer coach in Freeport, N.Y. But his health interfered. There were kidney problems and congestive heart failure. He had a pacemaker inserted in 1996 but it was clear that eventually a transplant would be needed.
Goodwin was hooked up to a defibrillator to control his heart rhythm and remembers the device going off seven times. ``It feels like somebody hit you in the chest with a baseball bat,'' he said.
He had been waiting seven months for a new heart, hospitalized in Manhattan's Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. He remembers his room, with a big picture window that looked over the Hudson River. ``I'd watch the sailboats every day,'' he said.
Goodwin is a big man, 6-foot-3, 270 pounds. His size, combined with a rare blood type, complicated the search for a new heart.
Then one night, he was awakened with the news that a heart had been located, that the operation would take place the next morning. He was prepped for the surgery and the heart began its fateful trip.
From Boston to New York City.
On Sept. 11.
At about the same time as the plane carrying Goodwin's new heart took off from Logan Airport on its lifesaving mission, two other jetliners left the same airport, also headed for New York.
At approximately 8:35 a.m., the small plane carrying Goodwin's new heart landed at Teterboro, N.J. Thirteen minutes later, American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Within 15 minutes, United Airlines Flight 175, also bound from Boston, hit the south tower.
Under attack, New York was immediately shut down. Air travel was halted. All bridge and tunnel traffic was stopped.
One of the last planes to land in the metropolitan New York area was the one carrying Doug Goodwin's new heart. The last vehicle to cross the George Washington Bridge before it was closed was the van carrying Doug Goodwin's new heart.
Those are two good reasons why he talks about miracles.
After six hours in surgery, Goodwin awoke. There was a TV in the recovery room and, his mind still hazy from the anesthesia, he tried to comprehend what he was seeing -- the mayhem and confusion that followed the fall of the twin towers.
``I thought it was a remake of the Godzilla movie,'' Goodwin said. ``Then the doctor told me that it was real.''
More like surreal.
In the days after his father's surgery, Doug Goodwin Jr., a defensive tackle at Boston College, was Big East Conference Player of the Week, recording eight tackles and two sacks in a victory over Temple.
``Every snap of the ball, I was thinking about my father,'' he said after the game.
The Bills, too, think about Goodwin. Owner Ralph Wilson has helped him financially and is exploring aid for him through the NFL Players Assistance Fund and Dire Need Fund. Ex-teammates such as Jack Kemp, Ed Rutkowski and Booker Edgerson made personal donations.
And Goodwin thinks of the anonymous donor who gave him another chance at life on a day when so many others died.
] Breaking Clay Makes My Day!
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