In 2016 Justin suffered a heart attack compromising his heart, which warranted the placement of a defibrillator, 2 years later in 2018 it became severely infected and had to be surgically replaced and moved. Many hospital visits and other issues let’s now jump to 2024 when he suffered double pneumonia, was septic and had 10lbs of water surrounding his heart, he was placed on breathing treatments even more medications and was unable to keep his employment. Since then Julie has been the sole provider for their family, working as much as she can to make ends meat for them, and Justin has been in severe heart failure now since 2018 and on or right around January 1st 2024 went through all necessary protocols to be placed on the Heart Transplant List. On July 27th 2026, though testing found that his heart had gotten way worse and he needed to be inpatient at the hospital until they could find him the perfect match heart for his transplant. So he then was admitted to OSF. On August 14th him and his wife got the best news ever, they found him a match and accepted a heart offer and he would have his long awaited transplant at 11 pm that evening, then just a few hours later the team came in and said had to move it to 12am, as they patiently waited and watched the clock tick by at what seemed like the slowest ever at about 11:45 the team came in and said due to the weather they had to push it back another hour (to 1am) then as the life flight helicopter was heading back with his new heart, at about 1:15am on 8/15/26 the team again had to come in and tell Justin and Julie that do to the storms that is the helicopter had to make an emergency landing and there was no way they could come back with the heart. So that means they are now back to waiting on a new heart again! Could be weeks months years you just never know! Well by the grace of god on 8/19/2026 the transplant team came into Justin’s room at 9:56 in the morning to say that another heart had been excepted. So on 8/21/26 Justin finally underwent his heart transplant surgery with GREAT success he is doing very well and expected to make a full recovery.
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