Remembering Shawn McDonald - Everybody's Best Friend! -

It is impossible to know how many lives Shawn McDonald has touched. Shawn had a way of making other people feel special. Like they must somehow be important just by the fact that they got to be around him. It was in the way he treated you or greeted you. It was the effect of being in his presence.

For a great part of his life, Shawn was larger than life. “Ten feet tall and bulletproof,” is what he’d often say. Shawn always seemed to be happy, excited even. It was as if he felt that the greatest thing in the world was waking up and being Shawn McDonald! Not in an arrogant way, but in a way filled with excitement and appreciation.

Even when the first level of his medical issues robbed him of his incredible physique and strength, that positive attitude was still there. Shawn seemed grateful that he could still do as much as he did. His sense of humor never left him even in the face of uncertainty. He never failed to express his excitement for life and remained a joy to be around.

On the day after Shawn had his fateful surgery, I took over his management duties at Gold’s Gym. I walked into the office, locked the door, and sat there and cried! I didn’t want to be the manager. I wanted Shawn to come back and keep being the manager and a great friend to everyone. We were all in shock. How could the closest thing we knew to Superman be going through this? Shawn’s situation was a reality check of how unfair life could be. The only thing that made seeing him bearable was his incredible courage. How could he still be so positive? How could he not be angry? How could he still smile and laugh? I knew the answer. Shawn cared about all the people who were concerned about him. He was strong for us. Plus, he was such a positive person by nature that he seemed determined to get the most out of life that he could, no matter what the circumstances. Still, I wondered if he could feel my heart breaking for him every time I saw him.

Shawn Explains What Happened to Him:

“Today marks 20 years to the day that my life was so drastically changed. Not bad seeing how the doctors first didn’t think I would last a night, then after a few days, said a few weeks, then a few months before finally deciding 1-2 years max because people who don’t get out of bed and have heart problems like mine develop pneumonia and die, usually rather quickly, but I’m still here!

I have had several close calls over the years after numerous bouts with pneumonia, 10+ surgeries, MRSA, cancer, gangrene-infected gallbladder, blood clots, a phantom infection that pops up every few years, and even a 2nd or 3rd heart attack! But you can’t keep a good man down (well good is debatable, come to think of it some of my friends may say the man part is debatable too), so I better just say you can’t keep me down! Sometimes I think I’m going to be the sole survivor, when the nuclear holocaust comes, after all the meds, poison, and radiation they’ve pumped through my veins!

The last time I was in the hospital one of the nurses got my sense of humor and was joking around about the size of my medical chart and he brought it in to show me and said this thing is longer than the bible! I attribute my longevity to my mother (if you don’t know her she is truly a SAINT), my excellent caregivers, all my awesome friends, and my ability to laugh/my warped sense of humor (literally, when I get laughing really hard, my lungs expand and that helps keep the fluid from settling in my lungs and causing pneumonia! Everyone knows how much I love a good joke, both by and on me! I have been blessed with the BEST friends! Some as old as grade school through a just the last few months, but I mean some really good friends “lifers”! When something like this happens to you, you really find out who your friends are. Some who you thought were really great friends disappear, some reappear and some never leave your side! I have purposely not mentioned any names but please know I love all of you lifers!

Some of you may not know what happened to me. When I was 24 I got very sick. The doctors thought I had severe asthma then they said I had chronic bronchitis. They would give me antibiotics and I would improve for a week or so but never get all the way better. each time I would get sicker and sicker. Finally, after this happened like 5 times, my friend who was a nurse took me to the hospital where she worked, after running a bunch of tests they determined I had Congestive Heart Failure, later testing determined a virus had attacked my heart causing Congintal Dilated Cardiomyopathy (basically a sick or diseased heart) and said l needed a heart transplant.

They put me on a bunch of medicines and told me they would contact me when a heart became available. I would spend my days walking at the mall, then I started riding a stationary bike and made friends with a guy who invited me to go mountain biking with him. Turns out he was studying exercise physiology and he worked with me and my heart got stronger and stronger until I could ride my bike up any mountain, but my heart rate got dangerously low because I was in such good shape, and doctors were concerned my heart rate would just get so low that my heart would just stop while I was sleeping.

When I was 26 on May 30th, 1996 they were putting a pacemaker in my chest to make sure my heart rate didn’t drop to low. During the surgery, my heart stopped and it took them 45 minutes of shocking me with the paddles and CPR to get my heart to start beating normally again. That caused a severe lack of oxygen to my brain, causing a traumatic brain injury. As a result, I can’t walk, talk, or eat! But thankfully most of the damage was to the area of my brain that controls motor skills and except for some short-term memory loss most of my thought process and memories remain intact, and most importantly I can still smile and laugh!”

Rest in Peace Shawn!

I’m not nearly smart enough to know why something like this happens to anyone, let alone someone like Shawn. I do believe that there is a balance to most things and more that is unseen and unknown about life and existence than not. So it’s easy for me to believe now that Shawn McDonald is free and soaring. He is no longer confined to the limits of a body that didn’t quite work anymore. He is light and love and smiles and energy. He is free to move, feel, think, and exist in a plane and place beyond what any of us can imagine. It’s easy to believe because he deserves that and more. He was an angel to many on earth. Shawn proved himself under circumstances that most others would not have been able to endure. I can’t imagine him being anything less than an angel now. Soaring through the heavens, having left us all better for the all too brief time he was here.