Dad, Awaiting Heart Transplant, and His Family Lose Everything in House Fire

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Ian Weeks was on his way to give a speech about organ donation Nov. 4 when he and his wife, Felicia, learned that their home was on fire.

They rushed home to Peachtree City, about 30 miles southwest of Atlanta, but by the time they got there, smoke was pouring out of the house so thick that they couldn’t even see it. Three of their four kids had been home at the time.

The kids all made it out safely, though their youngest, Jaylen, spent some time in the emergency room. The 11-year-old had rushed back into the house in an attempt to save his father’s medicine.

Jaylen knew that the medical supplies in the house were keeping his dad alive, and he thought that without them, his dad would die.

Jaylen “told me he’d prefer it was him” over his dad, Felicia Weeks told Yahoo Real Estate. “He didn’t understand we could get more medicine.”

Ian Weeks, 35, has hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a rare heart condition that enlarges and thickens his heart. He was diagnosed in 2002 and received his first pacemaker on Nov. 4 that year, the day before his son Jeremiah was born. (They also have a daughter in high school and a son in college.)

“Felicia was having heavy contractions and was going into labor, but her contractions basically stopped when I was in surgery,” Ian Weeks says with a laugh. “When I came back out, I arrived just in time to catch my son. I made it downstairs to catch the little egg-headed guy.”

After the pacemaker was implanted, Ian was intent on staying healthy. He continued to eat right and work out. Then, five and a half years later, he blacked out one day at the gym and started experiencing extreme pain at work. He was told to take it easy.

His heart doubled in size. He developed congestive heart failure, a condition where his heart isn’t supplying enough blood to the body, and atrial fibrillation, an irregular heart beat.

“It kept getting worse, and stopped me from working and at that time, as a man, you feel helpless,” Ian Weeks says. “Your job is to protect and provide. I couldn’t actually do that for my family, and it threw me for a loop.”

Three years ago, he was told he was out of options. No surgeries or medications would help him without a transplant.

He has been on the heart transplant list since, but his chances are slim, his wife says candidly. A number of issues specific to Ian—the thickness of his heart, his large chest, his rare blood type—make him a less than perfect candidate on a regional list of more than 5,000 people awaiting heart transplants.

For years now, their lives have centered on doctor’s appointments, organ donation awareness, and fundraising events, like the speech he was on this way to when the house caught fire, documented on their Facebook page Hearts of Steel.

And now they have to start over. They didn’t just lose precious keepsakes, like pictures of Felicia’s late parents. Their livelihood burned too: Felicia’s nail technician supplies; Ian’s catering equipment, which he’d passed on to his eldest son; and a photo booth that the family rented out.

The fire at the Weeks’ house is still under investigation, officials told Yahoo Real Estate, so the fire department couldn’t comment on the cause. It started in the furnace area and spread rapidly.

House fires are shockingly common: Chances are 1 in 4 that your household will experience a fire serious enough to call the fire department, according to the National Fire Prevention Association. Every year, U.S. house fires kill more than 2,500 people and burn an estimated $7.3 billion in property.

The American Red Cross says households that suffer fires have as little as two minutes to escape – though most people expect to have more than twice as long:

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The Weeks family didn’t have renter’s insurance, and landlords’ own insurance typically doesn’t cover tenants’ belongings. Felicia works part time, and their college-student son works as a cook in a country club to help out.

Meanwhile, the medical bills continue to mount.

“My mother-in-law grounded me today because I’m so dizzy trying to keep going,” Felicia Weeks told Yahoo Real Estate last week. “Life was already tough without a fire.”

But, though her voice cracked sometimes talking about everything the family had gone through, her husband said the family owed its strength to her.

“She’s my legs when I can’t walk and my heart when it’s not beating properly.”

On Friday evening, though, he posted on his Hearts of Steel Facebook page that she had been hospitalized. He asked followers: “If you find it in your hearts, please pray for my best friend Felicia McWhorter Weeks, and wife, also my caretaker.”

On Monday, he had better news: “Fee is finally discharged from the hospital, friends, and will continue therapy this week. Thank you guys so much for the support and prayers. We will be letting her get some much needed rest. … With your prayers and support we will get through this all.

“My best friend is home,” he concluded. “I am so thankful.”

One thing they’re not short on: love.

“People know us, and they really admire our kids and their tenacity,” Felicia Weeks told Yahoo. “They always wear a smile on their face, even though” — she paused — “basically their dad is dying and they’re watching it.”

It was that big group of family and friends that came to the rescue earlier this month. “Before the fire was even out,” Felicia said, they’d set up a GoFundMe campaign and had “people ready to donate clothes and bring us food.”

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The family is staying with Ian Weeks’ mother nearby as they hunt for an affordable place to live.

“There’s not a night I don’t get up late in the evening and go look at them and cherish those particular moments,” he says. “I wake up in the middle of the night to just look at my family and look at reality.

“I try to get lost in the moment of it. My motto with my family is to just enjoy those moments of sitting around with your children laughing and having those deep conversations with your wife.

“You get lost in the moment and pray by the minute and you stand for that final hour.”

More on Yahoo Real Estate:

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