NFL player’s heart, kidney give new life to Carew
SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO, Calif. — Baseball Hall of Famer Rod Carew received a new heart and kidney from late NFL player Konrad Reuland in what is believed to be the first such transplant involving pro athletes.
Carew underwent the procedure last December and met Reuland’s family in March after mutual friends connected Reuland’s death with news of Carew’s transplants on Dec. 16. Reuland had died four days earlier after a ruptured brain aneurysm at age 29.
Reuland attended middle school in southern California with Carew’s children, and he met Carew when he was 11.
“The whole thing is just unbelievable,” Carew told the American Heart Association News. “I’ve been given a second chance so I’m going to take advantage of it, and I’ve got another family.”
Reuland played for the New York Jets, Baltimore Ravens, San Francisco 49ers and Indianapolis Colts, who released him last August.
Reuland’s parents, Ralf and Mary, and their youngest son Austin took turns listening through a stethoscope to Konrad’s heart beating inside Carew’s chest when they met the former baseball star and his wife Rhonda, according to the American Heart Association News.
Last fall, Reuland was on a treadmill when he experienced a severe headache. The aneurysm, a ballooning in an artery in his brain, burst a few days later. He underwent surgery, but never woke from a coma and his brain activity stopped a few weeks later.
During the final hours Mary Reuland spent with her oldest child, she kept her right ear on his chest. Her final words to the representative of the organ procurement network were, “Make sure his heart goes to a really good person because Konrad was a really good person.”