Jason Gray-Stanford (holding frame) and from L-R: Mother Donna; St. Paul’s team members Josie Mackey; Dr. Mustafa Toma; Dr. Margot Davis; Dr. Jamil Bashir and Dr. Andy Ignaszewski.
Jason Gray-Stanford, a Vancouver-born actor who received a heart transplant at St. Paul’s Hospital in 2020, has donated the gold medal he won at a sports competition to the hospital’s doctors, nurses and care-team members.
“I don’t see a more fitting place for this medal than St. Paul’s,” says Gray-Stanford, who has appeared in the Hollywood movie, A Beautiful Mind and was a lead on the award-winning TV series Monk.
Gray-Stanford underwent the life-saving surgery at St. Paul’s, the BC centre for heart transplantation, in November 2020. He had been managing and living with heart failure for two years before the surgery, but late that year, in the middle of the global pandemic, his condition severely worsened.
Last August – not two years later – he sprinted to victory in the cycling competition at the Transplant Games of America in California. “My St. Paul’s health-care team got me to the point where I could compete there,” he says. “So I don’t see a more fitting place to house this medal than here, at the hospital.”
Gray-Stanford presented the medal, framed along with race mementos including his bib number, recently to St. Paul’s cardiologists Dr. Margot Davis and Dr. Andrew Ignaszewski, transplant surgeon Dr. Jamil Bashir, Medical Director of the Heart Transplant Program Dr. Mustafa Toma and Patient Nurse Educator Josie Mackey. All played key roles in his care.