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It started with chest pain while warming up for softball. A few months later, he was having heart surgery.

Andrew Hasquet said he felt a lot of pressure on his chest while warming up for a softball game. He'd have a heart transplant a few months later.

GLENDALE, Ariz. — Most Tuesday evenings Andrew Hasquet, 26, can be found playing softball in Glendale.

It’s not hard to imagine the heart it takes to play an outdoor game in July.

But Hasquet isn’t playing with his own heart. That's what makes him special. 

"Even to this day, it's still, like, kind of surreal," Hasquet said. "It doesn't really feel like it happened."

In January 2020 while warming up to work out while going to NAU in Flagstaff, Hasquet said he felt a lot of pressure on his chest.

"Pain kind of went away for like an hour and then came back and I couldn’t even really breathe without it hurting," Hasquet said.

He went to the hospital -- where his heart gave out.

“They had to shock me," he said. "My roommates actually – one of them – said that he just saw like my heart rate on the monitors shoot up to, like, 220 and then just stop and then I just fell back,” Hasquet said.

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Hasquet suffered a spontaneous dissection of his coronary artery, where a tear allows blood to build up between the layers of the artery wall.

After the team in Flagstaff placed stents, Hasquet was transferred to Banner University Medical Center-Phoenix.

Dr. Francisco Arabia, physician executive for the hospital’s Advanced Heart Failure Program treated Hasquet.

“I remember very well because he was one of the first transplants that we had done here,” Arabia said.

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Hasquet stayed at Banner UMC Phoenix for about a month, then went home. But had to go back.

“I got to the point where like just walking 20-30 feet I would get out of breath and just didn't really feel good,” Hasquet said.

A few days in, Hasquet found out he’d need a heart transplant, becoming the fourth transplant the new Banner University Medical Center-Phoenix’s Advanced Heart Program had done.

Credit: Andrew Hasquet
Andrew Hasquet received a heart transplant in 2020 after he suffered a spontaneous dissection of his coronary artery.

“That next day, I was, like, fully awake and I felt immediately amazing,” Hasquet said. “I felt so much better than I had already.”

Many, don’t have the chance to receive a heart like Hasquet, which is why Arabia said this program, just the second adult heart transplant program in the Valley, matters in Arizona.

“We knew that there is still an incredible demand,” Arabia said. “For patients who have advanced heart failure, transplantation is great, but there is just not enough hearts. There are not enough donors. There are about twice the number of people who get a heart a year that actually need a heart.”

Two months after receiving his heart donation, Hasquet was back to running on the treadmill at rehabilitation.

He’s recovered to the point that now where Hasquet says he doesn’t really think about the fact he’s living with someone else’s heart, even on the softball field three years later.

“It means everything, you know? I want to say I always was very grateful for my life, but now definitely put a lot of things in perspective,” Hasquet said. “Me and my friends, like we were always super close, but like every time we see each other we give each other like a big hug, tell each other we love them.”

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