Mastering The Art Of Success

Mastering the Art of Success

Mark welcome to Mastering the Art of Success.

So what happened when you were born?

MARK BLACK (BLACK)

Life didn’t start smoothly for me. When my mom a nd dad learned

th at they were pregnant in the fall of 1977, they were so excited to

gr eet their first-born child. These young, newlywed parents-to-be

couldn’t wait to add a new bundle of joy to their lives. And at first,

everything looked great. Everything with my mother ’s pregnancy

appeared to be fine, and my parents fully expected to have a healthy

newborn baby boy. But shortly after I was born, they realized that

something was very wrong—I started to turn blue.

Doctors rushed me away, did some testing, and determined that the

problem was with my heart. They came back to my mother ’s room and

explained to these young, first-time parents that their son had a

nonfunctioning valve in his heart and that he needed open-heart

surgery very soon. A short while later, I was taken by medi-chopper to a

children’s hospital and surgeons performed open-heart surgery on me

at one day old. I was blessed that the surgery went as well as it could go

and after a few months of recovery, my parents were able to take their

son home for the first time.

WRIGHT^
How did y ou cope with your illness throughout your childhood?

BLACK
After another surgery (on my first birthday), I was quite healthy
during most of my childhood. There w ere still many limitations but it’s
interesting because, a lot of what might have been difficult wasn’t
because I didn’t know any better. To me, g oing to the hospital, visiting
cardiologists, and not being able to do certain activities were rather
normal because I didn’t know anything different. It wasn’t until I went
to school and was able to compare myself with other kids my age when
I began to realize that I wasn’t quite like they were. And so I lived, quite
normally f or twenty-two years. Then, in May 2001, my life changed
forever.