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Canyon Springs High teacher waiting for a new heart

Martin Vece is glad he lives in a world of medical advances. “If this was 20 years ago, I wouldn’t be here,” he said.

Vece is awaiting a heart transplant. Until then, he relies on a left ventricular assist device (LVAD) to help pump his blood. It requires 20 pounds of apparatus, packed into a heavy-duty vest that looks more appropriate for a SWAT team member.

“I’m afraid the police are going to see me and think I’m a terrorist,” he joked.

Vece and his wife moved to Las Vegas in 2001 where he opened in “Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding” at the Rio. He worked out three to four times a week. When he began experiencing a lack of energy and shortness of breath about 10 years ago, Vece, now 46, chalked it up to getting older.

He went to see his doctor, was given an electrocardiogram and wore a temporary Holter monitor to get an around-the-clock look at what was happening with his heart. The diagnosis: hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

His left lower ventricle was enlarged and he had a rhythm problem. It’s a hereditary condition. Vece’s brother, Dominic, 12 years older, underwent a heart transplant at 35.

Vece’s doctor told him his left lower ventricle was so enlarged that it was inefficient at best. That affected his other organs, robbing them of oxygen every minute of every day.

He was given a defibrillator. Three weeks after getting it implanted, he experienced a deadly arrhythmia and was shocked.

“It felt like a stick of dynamite going off in my chest,” Vece said. “My doctor said, ‘You should have dropped over dead. We got it just in the nick of time.’ I mean, it’s like something out of a Hollywood script.”

In 2008, he was in the middle of teaching a senior English class at Canyon Springs High School in North Las Vegas when his heart stopped again. Once more, the device instantly kicked in and brought his heart back to life.

Passing out became a regular issue, sending him to the hospital so many times he lost count. In spring 2014, things took a turn for the worse: His lungs were filling with fluid. In October, he was sent to UCLA.

“They told me, ‘Your heart’s so bad, we think you’ll have a heart transplant within a month,’ ” he said.

“And this was around the holidays,” said Lizzy, his wife. “They said they (get more hearts) then. So, we thought it would be any day.”

The whole family moved with him. Each time Lizzy’s phone rang, she’d jump to answer it. But the days clicked by. No call. No heart.

After six days of testing, he was given the bad news: His lungs were so damaged from overcompensating for lack of oxygen, they couldn’t risk giving him a new heart. He wouldn’t make it through it the operation. They implanted the LVAD instead, as his heart was operating at 15 percent capacity.

LVADs are now used for months, even years, as one awaits a transplant.

Eventually, Vece was cleared to return to Las Vegas. They packed up another U-Haul and made the trek with their three daughters — Ava, now 9; Lucia, now 8; and Rosalee, who just turned 3 — and found a home in Summerlin.

Vece is back at work, but he said it’s taxing. Normally a passionate speaker who uses wide gestures and moves around the room dramatically, he now conducts class from behind a desk.

“By 2 p.m., I’m exhausted.” he said. “When I come home, I’m in bed by 7:30 or 8 o’clock.”

He spends his free time fundraising to help offset the mounting medical bills. People can contribute to the campaign at helphopelive.org.

“He’s ready to get his new heart, like, tomorrow,” Lizzy said.

What’s he learned?

“I struggled for the first year living with this; I felt like a handicapped person,” Vece said. “I learned awareness. When you’re living a healthy life, you tend to walk through life with blinders on. You see (handicapped people) and have empathy for them, but you cannot relate, not until it happens to you.”

Meanwhile, he waits for the day he’ll get the call for his transplant.

“You take it one day at a time,” he said. “I’m alive. If you take technology out of the equation and put me in 1960, I’m dead three times already. The defibrillator saved my life twice, and the LVAD saved my life. … I call myself Darth Vece. I’ve come back from the dead.”

To reach Summerlin Area View reporter Jan Hogan, email jhogan@viewnews.com or call 702-387-2949.

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