Recovering from transplant surgery, Dan Greulich fell prey to a drug-resistant infection. What happened over the next five months shows the terrible human and financial price of an epidemic raging through the U.S. healthcare system.

"LOS ANGELES – With good reason, Dan Greulich’s doctors called him “the miracle man.”

In the span of a decade, the insurance company executive engaged not once, but twice, in a race with death as he awaited replacements for failing organs. And twice, just as death was poised to win, he made it to the top of the national transplant list – ahead of thousands of other dying people. Donor organs became available, he was rushed into surgery, and he emerged with a new lease on life.

After Greulich’s second combined liver-and-kidney transplant in early 2012, his wife, Rae, sent a letter to the donor’s family. “You not only saved a man,” she wrote, “you saved a family.”"

Yasmeen Abutaleb, Ryan McNeill, and Deborah J. Nelson report for Reuters November 18, 2016. [2]