TJ Olsen, the 8-year-old son of former NFL player Greg Olsen, successfully received a heart transplant on Friday.
“TJ is finished with surgery and is being transferred to the ICU. We won’t be able to see him for a few more hours but his doctors are very happy with the surgery. TJ will be sedated for a few days but his road to recovery has begun,” Olsen wrote on Twitter. “We also want to ask that everyone takes a second to pray for our donor family. Their selflessness during a tragic time gave our boy a chance at life. We don’t know who they are, but we will forever be grateful for everyday we get to have with TJ.”
Olsen and his wife found out when she was pregnant with TJ that he would be born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a birth defect that affects normal blood flow through the heart. TJ had three open-heart surgeries before his third birthday but had been relatively healthy until recently, when his heart began to fail.
Greg Olsen played for the Bears from 2007 to 2010, the Panthers from 2011 to 2019 and the Seahawks in 2020 before announcing his retirement this year. Olsen‘s foundation donated $2.5 million to the pediatric cardiac center at Levine Children’s Hospital in Charlotte in 2019.
