Back in 2015, George Boakye-Yiadom was a 25-year-old professional basketball player in Europe when he was stricken in sudden fashion by a previously unknown heart condition that left him at death’s door.
Now 36, he’s living a normal life again in Mattapan, thanks to an anonymous organ donor, whose transplanted heart is now ticking inside Boakye-Yiadom’s 6-foot-7 frame.
“I would say you’re not just saving a life, you’re saving a generation,” he told The Reporter in an interview this month. “Because of that family giving me their son’s or daughter’s heart, I’m able to have children and provide for them. I had three boys after my transplant. I’m so grateful to that family.”
A native of Ghana, Boakye-Yiadom was very young when his parents came to the United States and settled in New York. A standout in basketball, he played for Sacred Hill University in Greensburg, PA, while studying Criminology and Criminal Justice with the idea of becoming a federal law enforcement officer. That notion was sidelined when his basketball skills took him to Finland, where he played for two seasons before the heart ailment intervened.
He was visiting his mother in Worcester when pain in his chest turned into a back pain, and he collapsed while working out. The diagnosis: congestive heart failure. His basketball days were over, his doctors said. More alarmingly, they noted, he needed a new heart to survive.
“It was just immediately taken away and it was an extremely depressing time of my life,” said Boakye-Yiadom. “I had to learn to deal with it.”
After a long pause, he continued: “Coping was tough because this wasn’t a gradual thing. It was like one day I could do anything and the next day I couldn’t do anything. It was difficult to process.”
What followed was a “six-year tailspin” during which he became resigned to death at a young age. An immediate need was surgery to implant a Left Ventricle Assist Device (LVAD) that would
sustain him while he was waiting for a new heart. Things moved fast in the operating room but not on the waiting list. Due to his height, and because he was considered stable with the LVAD in place, finding a suitable heart was always going to be difficult. A donor had to be within five inches of Boakye-Yiadom’s height and within 50 pounds of his weight, and their blood types had to match.
“I had a lot of things going against me in finding a match because I wasn’t the average guy. I guess God had a plan, though,” he said, noting that his faith in God and Jesus Christ helped him through the situation.
Things deteriorated in year six of the “tailspin,” he said, because the LVAD stopped working and the company that manufactured it was no longer in business, so it couldn’t be fixed or replaced. He had gotten to the point where he was in the hospital at Tufts Medical Center and had jumped to the top of the transplant list because he was failing badly, but help didn’t seem to be on the way.
“At that point, I was pretty much in the hospital waiting to die. It was crazy,” Boakye-Yiadom recalled.
There wasn’t much more the doctors could do for him at the medical center, and they were planning to send him home to continue his wait for a heart. Then, the night before he was due to be discharged, he was jarred awake by staff who told him that they had on hand a heart from a young adult who had died suddenly.
He was rushed into surgery. Details of that episode remain foggy to him, but family members told him he was “gone” for days.
“I was so out of it at that point, and weak, that when they told me and took me in for the transplant I didn’t even know what was going on,” he said. “I only remember thinking, ‘Hopefully I make it back.’”
The Difficult Journey Back to ‘Normal’
“I’m in year four now and this is the first year I really feel normal and that I haven’t had to go to the hospital consistently every month – and I can be more available to my children,” Boakye-Yiadom said last week.
Although the transplant was a success, “everything else” that came with it was a challenge. He developed diabetes and high blood pressure, gained weight, and made frequent trips to the hospital.
And there were the unexpected emotional aspects.
“For the first two years, I had a hard time in knowing that somebody had to die so I could live,” he said. “My therapist made me realize that no matter what happened, the accident would have happened anyway, and it wasn’t my fault. The donor made the decision to save my life. They wanted this.”
Boakye-Yiadom also had to re-learn how to stay healthy without working out as hard as he was used to doing. Being an elite athlete, he said, his mind often pushed him to places his body couldn’t handle.
“I work out like an old man now, and I do aerobic classes with old people in the pool,” he said. “I’m more about maintaining a healthy lifestyle than gaining strength and fitness to be athletic. I actually had to change my mind set on that. The first three years I told myself I could be ‘that guy’ again and I would go work out and end up in the hospital.”
This fourth year has been different in other ways, too. He has lost 65 pounds, run a 5K as a volunteer for New England Donor Services (NEDS), and enjoyed watching his boys play youth sports in the community.
He is training to play in the transplant games in Colorado next year, and in May, he will graduate from UMass Boston with a master’s degree in applied sociology. He is hoping for a career that will make a wide impact with research and funding.
He and his family cherish their neighborhood near Mattapan Square. He said he has grown to love the Haitian people and their culture as a result of having so many Haitian neighbors.
“We’ll never sell our house here. It’s a great place to be,” he said, smiling.
Mattapan’s George Boakye-Yiadom was a professional basketball player in Finland until a heart condition forced him out of the game, and nearly took his life. Now, four years after a heart transplant, he is finally feeling “normal” again and advocating for all residents to become organ donors. Seth Daniel photo
Moving into advocacy
Today, instead of boxing out for rebounds, alerting people that they can check a box to become an organ donor is Boakye-Yiadom’s main cause.
Most commonly, people become organ donors by checking off the box on their driver’s licenses or state identification card applications. Other easy ways include signing up on the Apple iPhone health app or on the national Donate Life Donor Registry at RegisterMe.org.
These are simple moves, but there is hesitation for many due to misinformation online. By no means is there 100 percent participation.
Despite that, New England Donor Services (NEDS), a non-profit that for decades has connected transplant organs and tissues with those on waiting lists, reported that record numbers of people like Boakye-Yiadom received transplants in 2025.
In New England last year, 640 deceased donors contributed to 1,692 transplants – placing NEDS in the top three nationwide. In fact, it’s the organization’s fifth straight year of record-setting numbers. Since 2020, the number of life-saving transplants has increased by 65 percent.
“Because of donors, courageous families, and the unwavering dedication of NEDS’ staff, generosity becomes legacy, and hope lives on for thousands of transplant recipients – turning loss into healing and the gift of donation into life,” said Alexandra K. Glazier, president and CEO of NEDS.
Some of that success has to do with advances in technology that expanded the use of organ perfusion devices and techniques that allow not only for better techniques in surgery, but also for the ability to use more donated organs, including some from older persons that might have been rejected in the past.
Success is also attributed to folks like Boakye-Yiadom, who become ambassadors for education on organ donation and expansion.
“If, God forbid, something happens and you’re able to save a few lives and generations, why not?” he asked. “If we let people know more about the process, they will feel more comfortable in checking the box to become an organ donor. They think they’ll die and then disappear. It is a process and there are checks and family involvement. If more people knew that, I think they’d be more confident.”
