Chaplain celebrates 4 birthdays: The day he was born, plus 3 more when his life began again

When Richard A. Thompson III walks through hospital corridors or on their grounds with families of loved ones who are injured or sick or dying; when he sits at the bedside, often holding the hands of patients; when he talks and listens to people whose pain is physical, emotional or both, he empathizes with what they're going through.

"My job is challenging and often rewarding," said Thompson, a licensed and certified chaplain in Waco, Texas, where his ministry includes the police department and a local hospital. "But everything I've been through was a prerequisite for what I'm doing now."

In the past 17 years, he has survived a series of cardiovascular issues that included a transient ischemic attack (TIA or mini-stroke), an aortic dissection and an abdominal aortic aneurysm. He looks at these events neither as setbacks nor with sorrow. Instead, he chooses to embrace three pivotal days during the year – days he calls his birthdays with every bit of the significance he places on March 1, 1957, the date on his birth certificate.

"I celebrate all four of them every year," Thompson said.

The first jolt to his health happened in 2007 at a potluck lunch with his fellow school bus drivers and other coworkers in Pike Township, Indiana. They noticed that despite his legendary love for food and chitchat, he was neither eating nor talking.

He was also exhibiting many of the classic signs of a stroke – slurred speech and a drooping side of his face. His friends called 911; at the hospital, doctors discovered Thompson was having a TIA. In a mini-stroke, a blood clot temporarily blocks an artery and can resolve on its own or with medication. It is often a warning of an impending stroke. He was treated and released within a few days – allowed to return home and able, for the most part, to resume his life.

A year later, excruciating back pain – "110 on a scale of 1 to 100," he said – necessitated another trip to the emergency room. There, Thompson was diagnosed with a tear in the aorta where it exits the heart.

Known as an ascending thoracic aortic dissection, the condition is often fatal. A 12-hour operation solved the problem. He spent nine days in a coma.

"I later learned that my family had been told if I survived that first night, I'd likely be in a vegetative state," Thompson said.

That was Oct. 24, 2008 – the first of his non-birthday birthdays.

As Thompson recovered, he lost his dream job as a commercial bus driver as well as the stamina he needed to work at the church he had founded. He had been its pastor, its maintenance crew and any other position that needed to be filled.

He was discouraged but felt ever grateful to be alive, relying on his faith and his family – especially his wife, Renita, son, Brandon, and granddaughter, Nadia – to get by. Which he did for two years. Then he developed an abdominal aortic aneurysm, a weakening in the wall of an essential blood vessel that sends blood to many structures in the abdomen and lower body.

Surgery to repair it took place on June 24, 2010 – non-birthday No. 2. But there were complications. He developed acute cases of pancreatitis and couldn't keep food down, leading him to need a feeding tube for six months. Along the way, he underwent a procedure to insert a stent in his bile duct; complications led to a near-fatal case of sepsis.

But as Renita said, "He is a determined man. He is never going to give up."

Just look at how he handled 2010: Richard spent all but three weeks in the hospital. He finally became strong enough to go through cardiac rehabilitation, first in the hospital, then once he came home. He also learned more about maintaining a healthy diet. He began eating fresh fruits and vegetables, lean protein and healthy grains instead of fried and processed foods.

He felt better until he didn't, and doctors couldn't figure out why. That led to birthday No. 3: March 24, 2014, the day he underwent surgery so massive that he wound up with an incision that required 92 staples to close. The surgery initially was to repair an artery from his heart to the lower part of his stomach. During it, doctors realized the stent in his bile duct from four years earlier had not been removed. It was making him even sicker, so its removal became part of the surgery, too.

Richard eventually returned to work as a security guard at a local mall. All that walking, Renita said, helped him lose weight and strengthen his heart. He graduated magna cum laude with a master of divinity degree and, despite a prostate cancer diagnosis in 2018, continued to stay the course for his health.

He had follow-up appointments with his cardiologist every three months, then every six months, then every year. But when he and Renita moved to Waco in 2020, three years passed before he had an imaging test. It revealed an aneurysm in his groin, which was treated in April.

Richard remains optimistic, his enthusiasm intact. He never tires of saying that life is a blessing, one in which another route can be found in every seemingly dead end, and in which light can be found in even the bleakest of situations. If he had not gone through so much with his heart, he said, would both his daughters be pursuing careers in nursing?

"He never showed me he was afraid," Renita said. "There were times I felt overwhelmed and challenged, but not him. He's the Energizer Bunny; he just keeps going."

Stories From the Heart chronicles the inspiring journeys of heart disease and stroke survivors, caregivers and advocates.