There are two very different sides to Bill Jackson. On one hand, he is a soft-spoken professional artist who specializes in painting serene landscapes, such as the bayous near his home in the New Orleans area. On the other, he’s a veteran who skydived for the U.S. Army Parachute Team, the Golden Knights.
All of these interests came to a halt last year when Jackson became too sick to do much more than walk across the room.
In March, Jackson received a heart and double lung transplant at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, an unusual procedure performed only a handful of times each year at VUMC and one that can occur at only the most specialized transplant centers.
Jackson suffered a series of setbacks that kept him in a hospital bed for months. When he eventually began outpatient therapy at VUMC’s Dayani Center in July, he was in a wheelchair. During the standard six-minute walk test, he could walk only 240 feet with a rolling walker. After months of physical therapy, Jackson was released to return home to Louisiana in October. He had just completed 1,900 feet during his six-minute walk test, “no rest breaks, no rolling,” remarked physical therapist Melissa Putnam, PTA II.
“He’s been an inspiration to me, and he’s been an inspiration to a lot of our transplant patients,” Putnam said. “It’s people like this, that if we ever question why we do what we do, when you put your head down at night, this is why we do what we do.”
Jackson had lived for decades without heart problems until the onset of AFib, a type of irregular heartbeat or arrythmia, in 2016. Local doctors ended up performing three successive ablation procedures to address the heart flutters that kept popping up, but he continued to have worsening problems coughing up blood.
“The doctors searched and searched,” he said. “The pulmonary guys … were trying to figure out what in the world was making this happen. Because I would go to the doctor, take some antibiotics to get better, and the next thing I know I’m coughing up blood again.”
Eventually he had a cardiac MRI, and he was diagnosed with Arrhythmic Right Ventricular Cardiomyopathy (ARVC), a rare genetic disorder that causes ventricular arrythmias. His medical team also discovered his pulmonary vein was occluded, which led him to the Vanderbilt Heart and Vascular Institute and Tom Doyle, MD, Ann and Monroe Carell Jr. Family Professor of Pediatric Cardiology. He had a procedure to clear the pulmonary vein.
Jackson returned home and was fine at first but soon “hit a wall again,” becoming short of breath. His heart was failing. He returned to Vanderbilt to receive stents, not realizing he would be back soon for a much more involved procedure — a heart and lung transplant.
Because of the occluded pulmonary vein, his right lung had begun to fail. Doctors suggested doing a double lung and heart transplant, using two lungs and a heart from the same donor to prevent complications. The transplant wasn’t really optional. “They said you either have to do it, or you’re not going to be here at all,” he said.
Ashish Shah, MD, professor and chair of Cardiac Surgery, performed the transplant, one of dozens of professionals who contributed to save and improve Jackson’s life.
“It’s easy to walk by the sick ICU patient,” Shah said, “to dismiss them, feel sorry, and even shake your head thinking about all the resources that get focused on a single individual. But Mr. Jackson is a powerful reminder of why we fight. Why we make that extra effort and do the hard things. It’s likely that hundreds of VUMC team members worked to help him get home, and each should be proud of that effort.”
Jackson is frank about the setbacks afterward. He developed a collapsed lung, and a hole was discovered in his esophagus, which took time to treat and heal. He spent weeks in a hospital bed on a feeding tube and became weak. Eventually, he could eat normally again and was released to inpatient physical therapy at Vanderbilt Stallworth Rehabilitation Hospital and then the Dayani Center.
“Bill is an unbelievable inspiration to me and so many others,” said Doyle, Jackson’s cardiologist. “There were so many days where all I could tell him was that he needed to be ‘Army strong.’ And he was. A true miracle.”
When Putnam saw Jackson arrive at Dayani in a condition weaker than most patients, she was concerned. But he was determined. Three days a week for three months, he showed up at rehab and put in the work.
“Working with her was great,” Jackson said. “She figured me out, and she figured out what buttons to push and what buttons not to push. We became good friends.”
Today, Jackson says he’s feeling better. He’s still a little weak, but he’s come a long way and is continuing his rehab at home. He credits the nurses, doctors and others on his Vanderbilt medical team for getting him there. He might not be diving out of planes again; he stopped years back. But he is ready to begin painting again.
“I’m going home to be in my house and my chair,” he said a couple of days before leaving Nashville. “I feel confident that things are going to go well.”
