Survivor’s Scot Pollard Gets Emotional After Heart Transplant
Scot Pollard owes his survival to one special person.
The Survivor alum—who competed on the CBS show from 2015 to 2016—shared that he received a heart transplant in February 2024 and was recently able to meet his donor's family to thank them in person as part of an emotional ESPN documentary Heart of Pearl.
Scot—who played with for the Sacramento Kings and the Indiana Pacers in the NBA for 11 years—was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, a genetic heart disease, after falling ill in 2021.
"I'm really attached to this heart," he said in the hospital, per an ESPN story published June 15. "I feel like it's the best one. That's the one I was born with. And the biggest fear is that the next one isn't going to be good enough."
Indeed, the athlete was declined for multiple transplants because he needed the right match to support his 6-foot-11 body. As his doctor Jonathan Menachem explained, "You can't put a Ford Festiva engine in an F-150 and think it's going to work well."
Scot, now 50, struggled to come to terms with his prognosis.
"I do remember feeling like, 'If this is it, I'm going to be OK,'" he said. "'But if it's not, I've got a lot to do."
Ultimately, he was matched with donor Casey Angell, who died at age 45 after being intubated following a case of pneumonia.
"You're losing your best friend," his wife Pamela Angell told the outlet, "but somebody else is gaining your best friend, in a way."
In fact, Scot's heart surgeon Dr. Ashish Shah noted, "In some respects, it was just the right heart for him."
While Casey remained anonymous to him at first, Scot eventually learned his donor’s identity by writing a letter to his family five months after his successful procedure through a program facilitated by his hospital.
"I live in Indiana and I'm writing this letter to express mine and my family's unending appreciation for your loved one's gift of life," Scot wrote, per the note obtained by ESPN. "My wife, myself, our four children, our extended family and friends are all forever grateful!"
"We would love the opportunity to meet at some point if you're amenable to that idea," his letter continued. "We want to let you know that your loved one's heart is going to be loved and cared for and will give love back."
In addition to sharing his work raising awareness for organ donors, Scot also praised the man that was lost.
"Your loved one is our hero and he will live on forever through me and our efforts of getting more people to be selfless heroes like him," he wrote. "If you don't feel comfortable responding, I completely understand. I just wanted you to know my lifelong appreciation for him. He truly is my hero."
The former basketball player received a response in October 2024 from Casey’s wife Pamela and his sister Megan Tyra.
"Scot, you warmed our hearts with your kind words concerning your donor, who was loved beyond measure," they wrote back. "February 16, 2024, was an incredibly hard day for those of us that loved your donor, Casey. When we knew that we were going to have to let him go, and were approached about organ donation, there was never a pause or a doubt that Casey would have wanted to help."
"Casey was a loving husband, dad, uncle, and the best baby brother anyone could ask for. Even though he was the baby, he towered over us all," their message went on. "Thank you for caring for that big heart of his. And we are grateful to know he is loved and will continue to give love. It means the world to us. He has inspired people in his own family to donate and be a hero like him."
They also agreed to meet in person, with Scot traveling to see them in Lindale, Texas, in March 2025.
"What we hope for moving forward," Scot told the outlet, "is just that I can keep living a good life because of their gift."
For more celebrities who've opened up about their health battles, read on.
The Beverly Hills, 90210 alum revealed in April 2025 that he was recovering from surgery after his appendix nearly burst.
“Last week, I started feeling some pain in my stomach,” Brian said in an Instagram video at the time. “I ended up going to the emergency room, and I had a perforated appendix. Not quite burst, but just before.”
He added, “I'm on the road to recovery. It's not an easy process. This is my first major surgery.”
Adam Devine shared that injuries he sustained after getting hit by a cement truck when he was 11 years old are still affecting him to this day.
“It’s been a nightmare,” Devine said in a 2025 episode of the In Depth With Graham Bensinger podcast. “I have spasms all over. For a while, [the doctors] told me I was dying—literally, within this last year.”
He noted that pain comes and goes, adding, "My body has all these things that are a little wonky and a little wrong with it."
The Bachelor Nation alum shared that he went to the hospital “crawling on all fours” due to overwhelming back pain that was aggravated during an RV trip with a friend.
“Right now, knees to my toes, it’s, like, still tingly, which is crazy,” he said on a March 2025 episode of his Trading Secrets podcast. “And to put in perspective, I don’t know, man, like not to sound douchey, but like two, three weeks ago, maybe a month ago, I was squatting probably like 295 pounds. And right now, I can’t do a squat on my foot. I can’t do a one legged squat, I fall. It’s like I had a stroke or something.”
But with the help of a back specialist and some steroids, he added, “We’re on the mend.”
The AHL player was cut by a fellow player's skate during a game in December 2024 and received 25 stitches. His father, New Jersey Devils general manager Tom Fitzgerald later told ESPN after his son was fully recovered, "We're very lucky. I don't wish that on any parent."
Real Housewives of Orange County’s Gina Kirschenheiter shared her ex-husband Matt Kirschenheiter suffered a heart attack in March 2025, but thankfully survived the ordeal.
The 30 Rock star suffered a health scare at a New York Knicks basketball game in March 2025, leading to him being wheeled out of Madison Square Garden.
However, the comedian shared an update on social media the following day, noting it was a case of food poisoning and that he was on the mend.
The Even Stevens alum shared in February 2025 that she was shot in the face while on a trip to shoot clay pigeons to celebrate husband Brendan Rooney's birthday.
"There was another party with us and they unsafely fired in the wrong direction and shot me in the face," she wrote on Instagram. "@thebrendanrooney immediately sprung into action, assessed me, and rushed me to the hospital. I was hit in 5 places, one was less than an inch from hitting me directly in my right eye."
The Kim Possible alum continued, "Unfortunately a fragment got lodged behind my eye and it is too risky to remove surgically at this time. Doctors will continue to monitor me (I can see normally at the moment)."
The actress said she was grateful to be alive. "I love my daughters, husband, family, and friends so much," she said. "I saw my life flash before my eyes and I’m telling you, hug the people around you every chance you can. Life can change in an instant."
While the internet isn't always a kind place, Amy Schumer is happy that, in this case, it helped her get answers.
"The internet really came for me after doing a bunch of press, and I was like, 'OK everybody, relax,'" Amy recalled of her "puffier" face on a January 2025 episode of Call Her Daddy. "But then doctors were chiming in in the comments and they were like, 'No no, we think something’s really up. Your face looks so crazy that we think something’s up. And I’m like, ‘Wait, I’m getting trolled by doctors?’"
After these doctors said they thought she had Cushing syndrome and that it may be caused by spiking coritsol levels or steroid injections, the Life & Beth creator thought, "Wait, I have been getting steroid injections in my scars."
"I had a breast reduction, a C-section, whatever, and so I was getting these steroid injections," Amy said. "So it gave me this thing called Cushing syndrome, which I wouldn’t have known if the internet hadn’t come for me so hard."Toda, Amy is just relieved she's OK. As she shared in a February 2024 News Not Noise newsletter, "Finding out I have the kind of Cushing that will just work itself out and I'm healthy was the greatest news imaginable."
Hailey Bieber had the "scariest moment" of her life when she was having breakfast with husband Justin Bieber and started experiencing stroke-like symptoms in March 2022.
"Justin was like, 'Are you OK?'" the Rhode skincare mogul shared a month later on YouTube, "and I just didn't respond because I wasn't sure. And then he asked me again and when I went to respond, I couldn't speak. The right side of my face started drooping. I couldn't get a sentence out."
While Hailey said the facial drooping stopped and her speech came back, she went to the hospital to make sure she was OK."They did some scans and they were able to see that I had suffered a small blood clot to my brain," the model added, "which they labeled and categorized as something called a TIA [Transient Ischemic Attack]."
Later, Hailey went to the University of California, Los Angeles, where she found out she had a hole in her heart called a patent foramen ovale (PFO).She explained the blood clot had traveled into her heart, "escaped" through the hole and went to her brain, leading to the TIA.Hailey said she had a successful PFO closure procedure and was now feeling great.
The same year Hailey had her health scare, Justin experienced one of his own.
In June 2022, the "Baby" singer shared he was diagnosed with Ramsay Hunt syndrome, a condition that caused temporary paralysis to parts of his face and forced him to cancel the remainder of his Justice World Tour.
"It is from this virus that attacks the nerve in my ear and my facial nerves and has caused my face to have paralysis," Justin explained in an Instagram video at the time. "As you can see, this eye is not blinking. I can't smile on this side of my face. This nostril will not move. So, there's full paralysis on this side of my face."
In fact, he told his followers it had gotten "progressively harder to eat." But after a while, the paralysis went away."He's doing really well," Hailey said on a June 2022 episode of Good Morning America, later adding, "He's feeling a lot better. Obviously, it was just a very scary and random situation to happen, but he's going to be totally OK and I'm just grateful that he's fine."
While Jamie Foxx initially kept details of his April 2023 hospitalization private, he later opened up about what he went through.
One day in Atlanta, "I was having such a bad headache, so I asked my boy, I said, ‘Listen, I need an aspirin,’” the Oscar winner said in his 2024 Netflix special What Had Happened Was... “Before I could get the Aspirin, I went out. I don’t remember 20 days.”
Jamie said he was initially taken to a doctor who gave him a cortisone shot and then sent him home. However, his concerned sister Deidra Dixon then drove him to a hospital, where they got an answer: He had a brain bleed that led to a stroke.
Twenty days after undergoing an operation, the Django Unchained woke up May 4 in a wheelchair and couldn’t walk. He then went to Chicago for rehabilitation and therapy.
"All I can tell you is that I appreciate every prayer,” he said, “because I needed every prayer.”
Emilia Clarke filmed battle scenes for Game of Thrones, but in 2019, she published an essay in The New Yorker titled "A Battle for My Life."Having a bad headache at the gym, "I reached the toilet, sank to my knees, and proceeded to be violently, voluminously ill," the actress wrote. "Meanwhile, the pain—shooting, stabbing, constricting pain—was getting worse. At some level, I knew what was happening: my brain was damaged."She was taken to the hospital for a brain scan.
"The diagnosis was quick and ominous: a subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), a life-threatening type of stroke, caused by bleeding into the space surrounding the brain," the Emmy nominee added. "I’d had an aneurysm, an arterial rupture."
Emilia had immediate surgery to seal the aneurysm, calling the pain "unbearable." While she was recovering, she continued, she experienced aphasia and was "muttering nonsense."A week later, "the aphasia passed," Emilia added, and she left the hospital a month after being admitted. At a 2013 brain scan, she learned a growth "doubled in size" and that she needed surgery again."When they woke me, I was screaming in pain," she wrote. "The procedure had failed. I had a massive bleed and the doctors made it plain that my chances of surviving were precarious if they didn’t operate again. This time they needed to access my brain in the old-fashioned way—through my skull."
Thankfully, Emilia shared, she's now "at a hundred per cent."
Snoop Dogg's daughter Cori Broadus is grateful for her family.
Because after she suffered a "severe stroke" in January 2024, her loved ones rushed to be by her side.
"I texted them that I just had a stroke and sent them a picture," she told E! News correspondent Will Marfuggi in December 2024. "Everybody just came to my rescue."
Because of other medical concerns, Cori ended up staying in the hospital longer than she initially expected."I could have went home after my stroke, but my lupus wasn't doing so well," the Snoop's Fatherhood: Cori and Wayne's Story star continued. "
"I'm doing great," she added. "I just had a little bit of motor skills that I had to work back on. But other than that, I was fine."
Shailene Woodley’s early 20s were not an easy time health-wise.
“It got to the point where I was losing my hearing. I couldn’t walk for longer than five minutes at a time without having to lay down for hours, and hours and sleep. Everything I ate hurt my stomach,” the actress said on a September 2024 episode of the SHE MD Podcast. “It was this conflation of issues and diagnoses and different doctors telling me different things.”
So Shailene—who chose to keep the exact condition private—set out to find answers. “I come from a very holistic background and study herbalism,” she added. “So I was very keen on, ‘I’m going to work with real MDs, [and] I’m also going to work with independent kind of healers.’ Just trying to search for some sense of comfort in my own skin.”It was a long journey—one that lasted for 10 years.“Throughout that decade, a lot of other things came from feeling so much discomfort physically,” the Big Little Lies star noted, “which was, ‘My gosh, if everything I eat hurts my stomach, I’m now suddenly afraid of food.’ And then going into the kind of mental f--ckery that can happen with that of body dysmorphia and confusion about identity and feeling safe in my own capsule, in my own skin, what that meant, and what that should be.”
After tending to both her physical and mental health, Shailene is feeling much better.“It was a journey that ultimately physically resolved itself, and I am very healthy,” she shared. “I’m so happy to be able to say that."
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