If you read what follows with only passing interest and not once pause to reflect on just how blessed you are to be alive . . . then, my friend, I have failed to do my job.

Imagine, if you will, being in your early 40s and a bike racer. You attend a day of criterium racing and do so well that you win money in the event held for those over the age of 30 - and in the one that includes borderline pros.

Yet afterwards, you express absolute frustration to your closest teammate.

That’s because in the race that came down to a two-man sprint for the victory you lost narrowly. But that didn’t occur in either of the two just-mentioned contests.

It happened in your third race that day. The one for guys over 40.

Quite a successful Sunday, huh?

Success that’s really no surprise, though, because you’ve pulled off similar Triple Crowns before. As well as a more typical and far greater one six years ago.

Back then, at the age of 36 and despite being an orthopedic surgeon who regularly works 80-hour weeks, you won over the course of a full season all three Pennsylvania State road cycling championships against all-comers, including guys who are borderline pros. It’s a feat that makes you absolutely legendary in Pennsylvania cycling circles.

Yet that feat takes a backseat to today’s story.

So you can stop imagining and I’ll start telling you more about the guy who had all that previous success: Dr. Neal Stansbury.

Two years before the aforementioned Sunday of racing, Stansbury began to experience at times what seemed to be ventricular fibrillation, the most common - and deadly - type of arrhythmia while racing. It would cause his heart to beat as if he were contesting the toughest hilltop finish against the toughest pros.

Two of these episodes were so severe Stansbury feared he was dying.

His fear was real. It’s just no colleague during his countless consultations with them recognized that fact.

Some even called him a hypochondriac. Others felt Stansbury would be all right if a procedure that destroys the part of the heart suspected to be causing the ventricular fibrillation was performed. So parts of his heart were cauterized six times.

Yet his situation got worse and worse and to the point he struggled to get up a single flight of stairs.

So Stansbury put away the bicycle, all thoughts of ever riding again, and devoted his strength to surviving each workday - and figuring out what was causing his condition. Eventually he caught what the docs had somehow missed.

That he had a very rare type of cardiomyopathy, one that would eventually kill him.

Unless he got a heart transplant.

Stansbury was added to a heart transplant list immediately. Meanwhile, and it truly was a mean while - three years at that - Stansbury’s heart deteriorated to the point it triggered multi-organ failure and forced his doctors to tell him what as a doctor he already knew. That without a donor heart, he’d be dead in two weeks.

Now there’s no way you can - or would even want to - imagine Stansbury’s next two weeks, which is why your role playing ended paragraphs ago. So let’s just fast forward, say the procedure was successful, and revel in the fact that Stansbury returned to work only 10 weeks after his surgery.

Which was no surprise to anyone one who rides with him, but was a bit of a head-scratcher for the doctors who had never raced against him. He returned to work, after all, 14 weeks ahead of their suggested schedule.

That fact attests to Stansbury’s bulldog nature, and so does this cryptic response: “Challenge accepted.” It’s what Stansbury said to a doctor who expressed serious doubt he’d ever regain the degree of fitness needed to race.

Since Stansbury’s initial words confused the doc, he clarified matters by adding, “I am about to prove you wrong.”

And did he ever.

In his first race for “normal” guys over 55, he finished fifth. After that, he learned that the Transplant Games of America offered a 20-kilometer time trial, trained for it, and took home the gold in the 2022 event held in San Diego.

Competitive fires fully stoked again, Stansbury kept training, won the 2023 state championship in the crit in his age group, and then took a far longer flight. One to Perth, Australia for the World Transplant Games.

There, he finished second in the 10-km time trial to a former professional cyclist from Great Britain - by a single second. He took the gold medal in the 30-km road race after getting in a two-man breakaway along with the Italian rider who had already won the race a number of times.

And with that triumph, it’s time to stop reporting and start editorializing.

What’s every bit as impressive - and just as motivating - is how Stansbury’s near-death ordeal has made him so grateful. He says,”I wake up every morning just thrilled I am still here and able to do what I do. I look at life through a different lens now.”

And if this article did its job, you will too.