New heart gives Matt Millen new purpose
Former Whitehall star, pro football player working to get in shape, help others
There’s a hill behind Matt Millen’s home in Bucks County that he used to climb. When his heart grew too weak, it became the “hill that crushed me.”
Now, with a new heart, Millen believes he could get up that hill if he had to. So he’s training again, kind of like he did during his football career.
“You know what the weird thing is?” Millen asked. “I’ve got to train this heart for me. I’m doing stuff and I think, ‘I don’t know how hard I should push it.’ I’m not getting ready for a season anymore, not getting
ready to bench 500 pounds anymore, but I still have the same mindset.
“I still have to train this heart. It’s got a long way to go, but it’s come a long way.”
Nearly 10 weeks after his Christmas Eve heart transplant, Millen is walking three miles a day on his treadmill and elliptical machine. He’s lifting weights, building cabinets in his wood shop and readying his return to football broadcasting. In fact, Millen hopes to be in the Big Ten Network booth for Penn State’s spring game in April.
But Millen, 60, also is training for his future. On many of his 98 days at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center, where the transplant was performed, Millen walked a mile around the Intensive Care Unit. Twentyfour laps. One patient called Millen the “walking man.”
Millen met other transplant patients and people on bypass machines. Some made him feel healthy and fortunate despite his condition.
During that time, Millen’s wife Patricia said they both learned about a “whole world of people who are suffering worse than we are, and eventually we’re all going to have an experience.”
“Maybe that’s what’s next,” Millen said. “Maybe that’s where you help.”
Millen’s journey, from being diagnosed with amyloidosis in 2017 to leaving the hospital with a new heart Jan. 5, will be chronicled Sunday on ESPN. Reporter Jeremy Schaap and a crew followed Millen for three months, interviewed Millen’s family and examined the transplant process.
The E:60 program, which airs at 9 a.m., is titled “All Heart.” Schaap called that a fitting description of the four-time Super Bowl champion who graduated from Whitehall High and Penn State.
“One message I think [the show] also explores is what it means to be grateful for what you have and what it means to show grace in the face of your own mortality,” Schaap said. “To me, Matt is just kind of the perfect guy to express that.
“He’s almost like a model of American manhood: the supertough defensive tackle, linebacker, Penn State, the Raiders. He represents almost an archetype of what it means to be tough. And the way he’s handled this brings it to a deeper level.”
The effects of amyloidosis, the rare disease that attacked his heart, left Millen with a functioning heart capacity of less than 30 percent by the time he was admitted last October. Before his transplant, Millen could not walk from his wood shop to the kitchen, less than 50 yards, without stopping four or five times.
Upon finding that his original heart was enlarged and stiff, surgeons told Millen, “We have no idea how that thing was still beating.” They ultimately attributed Millen’s endurance to years of football training.
Now, Millen’s physical life has transformed. He has undergone five biopsies since the transplant to test for heart rejection, all of which returned positive grades.
Millen takes 32 anti-rejection medications in the morning and 26 at night. He expects that number to be three by the end of the year. His amyloidosis, which was treated with chemotherapy through 2017 and 2018, is in remission.
At some point, Millen might need further treatment for it. A stem-cell transplant is a possible. He’s hopeful that advancing medication trials might help stave off further procedures.
Millen avoids handshakes and hugs to protect his redeveloping immune system, leaving him to share fist bumps with visitors. In his wood shop, where he’s building cabinets and doors, Millen wears a filtered mask to avoid inhaling dust particles.
Millen doesn’t know much about the donor. Just that his heart came from a 6-foot-2, 190-pound man. To learn more, he has to write the donor’s family a letter through the United Network for Organ Sharing. Millen is considering that.
Millen also is getting back to the life he knew before the transplant. Last week, he convened his weekly Bible-study group, which includes several Lehigh Valley wrestling coaches, for the first time since being hospitalized. Millen hopes his first field trip will be later this month to the NCAA wrestling championships in Pittsburgh.
“My endurance is getting better every week, and every week I get a little stronger,” he said. “I can feel it when I lift the weights, and I can even feel it walking around and doing simple things. So far, so good.”
Football and broadcasting remain important to him — “I was yelling at the television,” he said of watching Penn State’s loss to Kentucky in the Citrus Bowl — but Millen wants to help beyond that. He and Patricia are considering several ways to become advocates for those with amyloidosis or facing transplants. They want to encourage people to become organ donors.
“He’s had this rich and full life,” Schaap said. “He’s done the things he’s wanted to do and he’s seen his children grow up. I’m sure he wants to see his grandkids grow up. He’s built these incredible relationships with so many people and he’s only 60 years old. He deserves a lot more time.”
Millen remembers Jan. 5, the day he left Newark Beth Israel Medical Center, as quiet. He was alone with Patricia. A few doctors and administrators walked him outside.
“Kind of anticlimactic,” he said.
Now, Millen is getting on with life again.
“I did consider dying and I was OK with it,” Millen said. “That kind of surprised me. If that happened, it happened, and we move on to the next phase. But that didn’t happen, so I’m here for a reason. Now we find out what that is.”