... of cancer. Wow, talk about bad luck.
Huesman was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy while in high school. His heart, attacked by a pneumonia virus, was almost four times its normal size from trying to pump blood with weakened muscles.
He became the longest-living American recipient of a single transplanted heart in 2000, when a patient who had received a transplant a year before him had to undergo a second transplant.
"He had diabetes and cancer," [his wife] Carol Huesman said Monday. "His heart — believe it or not — held out. His heart never gave up until the end, when it had to give up."
And speaking of huge hearts, here's an interesting factoid: Cycling champion Miguel Indurain has a heart and lungs that are about 30% larger than normal humans. He won 5 straight Tour de Frances and was (in)famous for never looking exhausted. I guess that explains why. I've heard Lance is a bit of a mutant as well.
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One of the skiing champions from Norway had 50% more red blood cells than normal. I'll have to dig his name up from the mess around here.
Holy crap... FIFTY percent more? That is outrageously mutanoid. Think about it... that's like being 9 feet tall.
I'll double check but I've got here that Eero Mantyranta of Finland won three Olympic gold medals for cross-country skiing, partially due to intense training and partially because "a mutation gave him 50 percent more red blood cells than most men."
Although that "most men" makes me wonder what's the range? Do some people have 10 or 20% more red blood cells than normal?
Make that training, mutation, and steroids:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eero_Mantyranta
Although anyone who reads X-Men comic books knows that the powers that be smear the reputations of known mutants. Maybe Eero was clean afterall.
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