PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A Lehigh Valley surgeon took home a pair of medals at the National Cycling Championship, about eight years after he had a life-saving heart transplant.
Competitive cycling’s always been a big part of Jefferson Orthopedic surgeon Neal Stansbury’s life, as he’d won national championships and placed in international competitions.
“Then I started to get what's called ventricular arrhythmias or ventricular fibrillations, which would just basically drop me to the ground,” he said. Stansbury could barely make it up a flight of stairs.
As Stansbury’s heart continued to decline, he drove to the top of Hawk Mountain, one of his favorite climbs.
“I sat on the side of the road and cried and said, I'm never ever going to be able to climb up this hill again.”
In the ICU in 2018 with about two weeks to live, he received a heart transplant. When he asked his doctor about competitive cycling, the doctor said he would probably be able to ride a bike again, but never get close to racing again.
“And so I basically looked at him and said, ‘Challenge accepted.’”
As he worked to get back on the bike and back in competition shape, he returned to Hawk Mountain.
“I cried when I got to the top again because I had accomplished something that I thought I would never again see in my life,” he said.
Stansbury won a pair of silver medals in the 65-to-69 age group at the USA Cycling Masters Championship in Wisconsin.
He said his message is that organ donors and their families are true heroes, and becoming an organ donor doesn’t just mean you might keep someone alive; you are giving them back their life.
“You're giving somebody back their life. I walked two of my daughters down the aisle this year. I've won a national championship, or not won, but took second in a national championship,” Stansbury said.
