A year ago, he and his wife, Larisa, shared their expectations for 2020.
“Hers was that there would be a lot of change and it would be a busy, stressful year, but you’re going to overcome it,” he said. “And mine was that it was going to be a year of healing.”
His voice is quiet and raspy, a vestige of him spending more than four months on a ventilator after undergoing a heart and double-lung transplant in June, followed by near-fatal complications.
“We look back now, and we’re like, 'Thank you, Lord,’” he said, sitting in the living room of his parents’ home in Hilliard. “I got the healing part, I just didn’t think it would take a year.”