We all know how Matt Millen’s health crisis turned out. And through hindsight comes certainty after the fact. Of course a donor heart turned up on Christmas eve. Of course the transplant was a success. Of course Millen is getting back to his old life and his old self.
The part we were able to observe looking in from the outside was about as reassuring as an impending heart transplant can be. The stoic pragmatism from Millen, who won Super Bowls as a member of the Raiders and 49ers. The fact he reported to his job at the Big Ten Network at the outset of the college football season, just like always. His decision to step away from the job to focus on his health. The periodic updates through the likes of NBC’s Peter King.
Now an ESPN film takes us behind the scenes of Millen’s gripping medical odyssey. “All Heart” airs Sunday at 9 a.m. EDT on ESPN.
"It’s ironic that the thing that failed him was probably the single thing that you’d use to describe Matt — all heart.” -Howie Long on Matt Millen pic.twitter.com/hhbikPweTj
— E:60 (@E60) February 27, 2019
Sports journalist Jeremy Schaap documented the story beginning last summer, shadowing Millen from July until February. So he was around for Millen’s 84-day hospital stay awaiting a donor heart, dressed in a gown, a bouquet of tubes and ports dangling from his right arm. On the inside looking out, where nothing was preordained.
“It would be fair to describe Matt at this point as having end-stage heart failure,” says a doctor in the film. “In the absence of treatment, the natural history is death.”
The 12-week wait for a heart gives a lot of people a lot of time to think.
“You’re just kind of waiting and praying,” says his daughter Marianne Carlson. “Here’s this NFL football player that was beating people up, and now he can’t finish a walk.”
“One week becomes a month,” says Matt Jr., who calls his father a man of action. “A month becomes two months.”
“Where is it going to come from?” asks Howie Long, Millen’s Raiders teammate. “Is it going to come? Is it going to be a match?”
“People ask me, ‘What do you think about this, if you ever think you would die?’” Millen says. “I’m like, ‘No. Why would I think about it?’ I don’t think about that. I’ve got too much living to do.”
Suddenly, on day 84: “We get the text message,” Matt Jr. says. “It’s from Dad.”
“I read it, and I’m, ‘What?’” says Carlson. “And so I text back, ‘Are you getting a heart?’ And he says, ‘Yep.’”
“The irony isn’t lost on me that it’s Christmas eve,” Millen says. “So I’ll take that.”
To Schaap, Millen says, “It’s been an interesting life.”
A couple seconds pass before Schaap answers, “Well, so far.”
“So far,” Millen says.