On Christmas Day, as always, Gavin Class will likely bow his head over the bounty and say his amazing grace:
Thank you, Lord, for saving my life …
His story is one to remember. In August 2013, Class, a football player at Towson University, collapsed at practice from heatstroke. His body temperature soared to 111 degrees. He was hospitalized, in a coma, his vital organs failing in quick order. His heart stopped. His kidneys shut down. His liver gave up, a perilous omen. Doctors at University of Maryland Medical Center likened Class, a strapping 310-pound lineman, to having been zapped in a microwave oven.
A liver transplant — a six-hour procedure — staved off death. The donor was a 51-year-old man from Pittsburgh. But the ripple effect took its toll. In the days to come, a weakened Class battled pancreatitis, a collapsed lung, pneumonia, shingles, appendicitis and cancer, surviving four weeks of chemotherapy. In the coming months, he underwent 16 hospital procedures before he was declared out of the woods and on the mend.
He remembers none of it.
“It was like I fell asleep in August and woke up in October,” said Class, a Monkton native.
Recovery alone wasn’t enough. Adopting a challenging physical program, he returned to college and strove to play football again. In 2015, he sought to return to the Towson team. But the school denied his request, and the courts agreed.
Now 33, Class lives in Erie, Colorado, with his wife, Rachel, and infant daughter, Shiloh. A sports performance coach, he trains young athletes intent on making a name for themselves.
“I know how people chase their dreams,” he said. “I love being able to help them get somewhere that I couldn’t.”
That some of his clients are rallying from sports-related traumas suits Class fine.
“It’s easy to relate to athletes who’ve had season-ending injuries,” he said. “They know my story; we can connect.”
At 6-foot-3 and 250 pounds, he bears few visible scars, save for the inverted V on his chest from an incision that took 47 staples to seal, and a tattoo of a Bible verse that reads, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me (Philippians 4:13).”
God breathed him new life, said Class, who said the experience turned him from being “a passive to an active Christian.”
“I’m here because He had a reason for me to be alive. What it is, I’m not sure. Maybe it’s what I’m doing now — being a husband and father, and multiplying the kingdom of God on Earth through my kids,” he said.
He’s a spokesperson for safety protocols during football practice, including treatment of heatstroke. Class authored a book on his experience and, with his parents, established the You Only Live Twice (YOLT) Foundation to support organ transplant patients and heatstroke victims. Since its inception in 2017, the nonprofit has raised nearly $500,000.
In 2018, after Jordan McNair, a University of Maryland lineman, collapsed from heatstroke during a team practice, Class was asked to visit the McDonogh graduate at UMMC, where he lay critically ill in the same unit where Class had struggled five years before. There, he grasped McNair’s hand.
“Be strong, Jordan,” Class whispered to the sleeping giant. “Fight every day. Be positive.”
McNair died a week later.
His own episode still follows Class. There are routine blood tests to check his well-being. Every year, on the date of his organ transplant (Aug. 16), Class and his family celebrate his “liverversary” with a cake. And every day, it seems, he reflects on the anonymous source of his allograft, and the family the donor left behind.
“We write to each other, through a third party,” he said. “[The family] said that I’m blessed with this gift, and that I should cherish it and use it for the glory of God.”
That he never got to play football again rankled him “for a long time,” said Class, “but everything happens for a reason. If not for [the setback], I wouldn’t have found my faith in Jesus, so I’m grateful for my heatstroke. Sounds weird, doesn’t it?”
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