Brian H.: A Heart Attack at 35, a Heart Transplant Lost to Cigarettes, and the Quit That Won It Back

Brian lived with smoking-related illness for more than 30 years: a heart attack at 35, COPD, a heart transplant and lung cancer. He died in 2022, at 68. His story is one of CDC's Tips From Former Smokers campaign.

Growing up around smoke

Brian grew up in Chicago. Both his parents smoked, and it seemed to him that everyone around him did — smoking, he said, had become fixed in his mind. He started at 8 because he thought it was cool. His parents caught him at 12, but he kept sneaking cigarettes, and by 8th grade he smoked a pack a day.

The Air Force years

At 19 he joined the U.S. Air Force, and was assigned to a base in California, where he fell in love and married his sweetheart, Denise. As a master sergeant he carried a lot of responsibility, and he smoked to cope with the stress.

One morning, stationed in England, he had chest pains walking at work. He was short of breath and sweating, the pain grew worse — and he collapsed. At 35, Brian was having a heart attack. The next day he had an angioplasty, in which a surgeon uses a balloon-like device to open a blocked blood vessel. Denise flew over at once.

He recovered slowly — and went straight back to cigarettes, sneaking them as soon as he left the hospital. His heart disease ended the military career he had wanted.

Brian's tip: a heart attack at 35 while serving in the Air Force. CDC, Tips From Former Smokers.

Years of illness

On leave after the heart attack, Brian had more chest pain and was admitted to an Air Force hospital in San Antonio, where he was diagnosed with a serious arrhythmia — an irregular heartbeat that can kill. Surgeons put a defibrillator, a device that helps regulate abnormal heartbeats, in his chest.

Denise quit her job to care for him full-time, taking charge of everything from his medical care to running the household. Brian said he owed her his life, literally.

He had several more heart operations. In 2000, at 46, he was diagnosed with COPD, a disease often caused by smoking or secondhand smoke that makes breathing harder and harder and can be fatal. Eventually his doctor told him his heart was so damaged he needed a transplant.

"Do You Know?" — Brian on the smoking-related illnesses most people have seen in someone they know. CDC, Tips From Former Smokers.

Off the list

In 2007, Brian was added to the national heart transplant waiting list, and the family was thrilled. It didn't last. One evening his doctor called: he had been taken off the list. A routine blood test for nicotine had shown he was still smoking. Brian and Denise were devastated.

With no other treatment left and his health failing, he resolved to quit so he could have a chance to live. In spring 2009, at 55, he joined a quit-smoking class at a military hospital, followed every step and never smoked again.

A new heart, and what came after

Because he stayed smokefree, he went back on the list, and in 2012, three years after quitting, he got his new heart. He was hopeful, but had been told plainly that a transplant is not a cure.

The years of smoking kept taking their toll. In 2017, at 63, he was diagnosed with lung cancer and had part of a lung removed.

In one of his campaign ads, Brian points out that you probably know someone who has had a heart attack, COPD, heart bypass surgery, a heart transplant, lung cancer, or part of a lung removed because of smoking — and that he had been through all six.

"There's Hope" — Brian urges people who smoke to quit. CDC, Tips From Former Smokers.

Together

Brian and Denise were married more than 45 years, and much of that time was spent in doctors' offices and hospitals. Denise was there for every appointment, scan, surgery and recovery; his illnesses shaped both their lives. Brian refused to let them stop him living fully. He kept a positive outlook and called every day with his wife and grandchildren a gift. In one of his videos he urged people who smoke to quit.

Denise and Brian: time together. CDC, Tips From Former Smokers.

Denise and Brian: uncertainty. CDC, Tips From Former Smokers.

Free help to quit

Sources

Based on "Brian H.'s Story," Tips From Former Smokers, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including the campaign's videos with Brian and Denise; a work of the United States government in the public domain; rewritten in hubnx's own words. The videos, missing when the page was imported, are restored from the Internet Archive's copies of CDC's files (2026-09-27).