For years, Craig Watson measured life in billable hours, court deadlines and long workdays.
The father of three worked long hours as a lawyer, often putting in 10- to 14-hour days, sometimes more during trials. Even after being diagnosed with atrial fibrillation (AFib) at 39 and receiving a pacemaker, he carried on with work and family life as normally as possible.
“I had three little kids,” Craig says. “You just had to get things done.”
But during a family vacation to Mexico in 2011, things changed dramatically.
At an all-inclusive resort during spring break, Craig suddenly became seriously ill. At first, he blamed the heat – or maybe the enchiladas, he jokes now. He spent hours sitting in a bathtub filled with cold water trying to cool himself down.
Then everything around him turned green.
“I remember staring at the trees,” he recalls. “The next thing I knew, I woke up in intensive care.”
His AFib had escalated into ventricular tachycardia, a dangerous heart rhythm that sent his heart racing close to 200 beats per minute.
Craig’s children flew home to Canada while he and his wife remained behind in hospital for a week.
Back home in BC, life became a cycle of emergency visits, procedures and mounting uncertainty. Crag learned techniques to stop episodes temporarily – bearing down, coughing, trying anything to slow the arrhythmias – but the attacks kept coming.
“I was in and out of St. Paul’s Hospital constantly,” he remarks.
Doctors attempted multiple cardiac ablations. None worked. Eventually, his pacemaker was removed and replaced with a defibrillator. By September 2012, Craig needed a left ventricular assist device (LVAD), a mechanical pump that helps the heart circulate blood.
Even then, he continued trying to maintain normal life for his family.
His children – born in 1998, 2000 and 2002 – were still young. Craig and his wife worked hard to protect that normalcy despite the constant strain.
“My wife was there all the time in the hospital with me,” he says. “My parents helped out too. I had a lot of family support and we just pushed through.”
At the time, stopping wasn’t really an option. But physically, his body was deteriorating.
“When I got the LVAD, my ejection fraction was 20 per cent,” Craig explains. “I was winded after walking one block. I was down to about 180 pounds and completely gaunt.”
The defibrillator shocked him four times in a single month.
By 2013, Craig was waiting for a heart transplant.
Patients on the transplant waitlist carried pagers issued by the hospital at the time – devices were tested regularly to make sure they were still functioning. One afternoon, while driving home from a legal proceeding in Langley, Craig’s pager sounded. Assuming it was simply another routine test, he followed protocol and confirmed the test worked.
Then it sounded again. And again. And the phone rang. It was his wife.
Pulled over near the south side of the tunnel, Craig suddenly realized what was happening.
A donor heart had become available.
Craig’s office was only blocks away from St. Paul’s. Before heading in, he stopped briefly to tell his coworkers goodbye. “I said, ‘See you later with my new heart!’”
His wife met him at the hospital. Bloodwork and transplant preparations moved quickly. Their oldest daughter arrived after school before he was wheeled into surgery.
On May 16, 2013 – nine months after receiving his LVAD – Craig received his new heart.
The recovery was difficult, but not as frightening as his earlier surgeries.
By then, he had regained strength through exercise and careful rehabilitation. He spent about two weeks in hospital before returning home, determined to reclaim his life.
“As soon as I could move, I moved,” he says. “The nurses needed to see you walking the hallways before they’d let you go home.”
Within two weeks, he was discharged from hospital, and within a month, he was back at work part-time.
Before his transplant, Craig said work had consumed almost everything. Afterward, his priorities shifted in ways he never expected.
“At 12 months post-transplant, they tell you your mortality rate is basically the same as everyone else’s,” he says. “So we went to London.”
The family began travelling more. Craig started making time for the gym, for friends, for dinners and experiences that once would have been pushed aside for work.
“It became more about working to live instead of living to work,” he shares. Now, more than a decade after his transplant, Father’s Day carries a different meaning.
Today, two of his children live in Europe, while his son still lives at home. This Father’s Day, Craig plans to spend time with family over a backyard barbecue with his son, father and brother.
It’s a simple celebration. But one he knows he very nearly missed.
Craig says the greatest gift his transplant gave him was time – time to watch his children grow up, time to travel, and time to simply be present.
Every year, Craig marks his “heart anniversary,” reflecting not only on his survival, but on the family whose loss made his second chance possible.
Craig and his family on vacation after his transplant
About a year after his transplant, he wrote a letter to his donor family – something he still describes as one of the hardest things he has ever done.
More than a decade later, the weight of that gift still stays with him.
“It’s hard to put into words,” Craig emphasizes. “I’m living on borrowed time because of somebody’s gift.”
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