This Guy’s Story Will Take Your Breath Away

When Ted Ball was a child, jokes were part of the main course around the family dinner table. He’d laugh, stop breathing and then excuse himself to get sick.

Everyone knew the Ball home as “Oh, yeah, that place where the fire engine always comes” to revive young Ted.

When he went to college, his classroom was on a hill overlooking the lot where he parked. He’d arrive earlier than everyone else so he could walk, stop, walk, stop and finally make it to class.

He was always thinking about his next breath. “It was constant,” he said.

When he was older, still wheezing from asthma, he’d have trouble explaining why he was breathing so hard, especially around pretty women. His father advised him to just tell them, “It’s passion.”

Everything was a calculation. Does he get up and walk now, or catch his breath? He loved to dance, so he learned to dance with very little movement. He knew he was never going to hit an inside-the-park home run.

Two years ago, Ball was walking around with a tube in his nose and pulling a tank of oxygen. His name was put on a waiting list for a double lung transplant. He stayed within two hours of UCLA Medical Center ... for the next eight months.

In May 2002 he received a call from UCLA that a 44-year-old woman had died, and he was off to the hospital for a double lung transplant.

“The first thing I can remember when I woke up was taking the first deep breath of my life,” he said.

He is still taking almost a dozen medications daily to keep his body from rejecting the organ transplant.

But Sunday morning, Ted Ball will be running in the 26-mile-plus Los Angeles Marathon, admittedly a concern to Dr. David Ross, medical director of the UCLA lung transplant program, “because I’m running too, and he might pass me.”

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BALL HAS never run a marathon. A week ago he was the 61-year-old man on the treadmill at the Santa Monica YMCA doing 18 miles in over four hours. He says his eyesight is fine, which means he saw those signs that read: “Please limit your workout to 20 minutes if someone is waiting.”

“I just feel so good,” said Ball, who will be running with his 64-year-old brother, Jack, a triathlon coach at UC Berkeley. “Running in this marathon represents the 59 years that I didn’t really have, and the life I’ve been given by a donor, which is the greatest gift you can get.

“The marathon was the only thing that really said to me, ‘you’re healthy and fit, and can do anything you want now.’ It’s something I have to do for my dad, who always said, ‘Just get on with it,’ and for everyone else who knew me only as sick Ted. That’s why I’ll walk if I have to. I’ll walk slow, I’ll crawl if I have to finish, because it represents life to me. I’ll do anything I need to do to finish.”

I suggested a bus, but he said he’s an MTA bus driver along with being an artist, painter and sculptor, and he said he’d like to run for a change. I told him I’d join him if I were in better shape, but someone was always on the treadmill. He laughed, and he didn’t need to excuse himself to get sick.

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DR. ROSS will be running in his 18th marathon. Each year he runs in honor of one of his patients. “These are inspiring people who are waiting for a new lease on life,” he said. “It’s just my little tribute to them.”

This year will be different. He’ll run in memory of his father, who died recently -- from emphysema. “The cruelest of ironies,” the lung specialist said.

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DR. ROSS credits the surgical skill of Dr. Abbas Ardehali for the 92% rate of first-year survival for lung-transplant recipients at UCLA compared with a national average of 70%-75%. And then there’s Ball, who puts even more verve into the word “survival” at UCLA.

“I’m aware of only one other lung transplant recipient to run in a [New York] marathon, a 32-year-old Norwegian,” Dr. Ross said. “There’s significant risk. Ted is on three drugs to suppress his own body’s immune system to prevent him from rejecting the transplanted organs. He’s going to be in a crowd of 20,000 in a demanding event with the potential of pneumonia and serious respiratory infection.”

As for the long-term survival rate of lung-transplant patients, “We’re talking about 50-60% of patients making it five years,” Dr. Ross said, “so we can’t necessarily promise increased longevity, but we do see an improved quality in life.”

Beginning with Ted Ball, who was teaching school before Dr. Ross suggested he do something else in order not to expose himself to the germs that come with working with kids. “So he becomes a bus driver, talking to all kinds of people and breaking up fights,” Dr. Ross said. “That’s Ted.”

Dr. Ross noticed it the first time he met Ball, who stands no taller than a jockey. No wheelchair when he couldn’t take a step without losing his breath. No complaints. No acceptance that things might not go so well.

“Listen, my wife enjoys hiking,” said Ball, who has been married 28 years. “I had always told her when I die and I’m cremated, have my ashes spread on the John Muir Trail because I knew I could never make it. But now, it’s, ‘No, no, let’s put off that cremation stuff. I’ll walk it.’

“I go places now and I feel like I’ve won the Olympics. I went hiking, and to be in a place my wife liked so much and share it with her was just magical.”

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LOOKING BACK, Ball said, the last few years haven’t been kind to him, or the Dodgers. “We’ve had something in common,” he joked. “I feel sorry now for Jim Tracy. It looks like he could use my oxygen tank.”

Hard to comprehend. Two years ago at this time, Ball was dying, but now he’s looking at a marathon finish line like an athlete who pictures himself winning.

“I’ve fantasized about finishing,” he said. “Sometimes I have my arms up and I’m cheering. Other times I’m tearing up. It means a lot to me, and to all the people who helped me get to this point. I’ve been held back for 59 years, but it’s open to me now to do anything I want.”

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T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Simers, go to latimes.com/simers.