The gift of life came in the nick of time for an Ohio man.WLWT, a Hearst station, first interviewed Mark Plummer in April 2022.He was suffering from interstitial lung disease, an incurable lung disease that causes stiffening of the lungs, and his insurance would not cover the transplant he needed.Less than a year later, he has a new set of lungs.Doctors still don't know what caused him to develop the disease, but Mark Plummer said he is eternally grateful to the person who saved his life by being an organ donor."It is absolutely a second chance at life," he said. "We started calling it the gift."Mark Plummer was admitted to a hospital in Columbus, Ohio, in early April. Family, friends and complete strangers helped pay the bill."I got donations from all over the country. We were amazed. Your story got picked up by stations all over the place," Mark Plummer said.Ohio State's Wexner Medical Center covered the rest through financial aid.Mark Plummer received his life-saving transplant on April 19."I was very, very, very sick, so my recovery was much rougher than most people," he said.After the surgery, his kidneys went into shock. He was on dialysis for a month and spent a total of eight weeks in the intensive care unit. Then he spent time in rehab and another three weeks in Columbus for observation before heading home to Cincinnati."I knew he had it in him, but it was scary," Mark's wife, Linda Plummer, said. "I don't have to worry about him as much anymore. I don't wake up and — how loud is he breathing, is he breathing OK, checking his numbers."He is now healthy enough to return to work and started a new job with Capabilities Driving School, teaching teens and young adults with disabilities how to drive. He is back to playing with his grandkids, including an adorable new grandson, and walking his two dogs around the neighborhood."I can pretty much do what anyone else can do, up to — I'm not ready to run a marathon yet," he joked. "Organ donation does save lives, and I'm sitting here talking to you as living proof that it really does save lives. And I'm looking forward to hopefully living at least another fifteen to twenty years because of that gift."Now he plans to pay that generous gift forward."Why not? Why not pay it forward and help somebody?" Mark Plummer said. "Somebody helped me."Several weeks ago, Mark Plummer saw a post on Nextdoor by a young woman named Bra'Naye Willis. She and her boyfriend rent an apartment at the Williamsburg Apartments of Cincinnati, and she was looking for advice. She said their apartment had no heat, there were leaks and air quality issues, among other problems."I had an asthma attack most recently in December because I couldn't breathe because of the air quality conditions," Bra'Naye Willis said. "It hurts me that people just really don't care about any of us."The apartment complex has been in the news for months for a series of health and safety violations. The city of Cincinnati filed a lawsuit against the owners in January."Both her and her boyfriend, they suffer from lung issues, so that made a connection with me immediately," Mark Plummer said. "Someone who has asthma doesn't need to be in an environment like that."He started a GoFundMe page for the couple to help them move somewhere else before their lease is up. He also made the first donation.He is determined not to take his second chance at life for granted and said he is "eternally grateful" to the donor's family."On the worst day of their lives, they lost a loved one. That became the best day of my life," he said.

If you're still hesitant about getting a vaccine or don't want to mask up, one young man said he hopes his story will help change your mind.In March 2021, Blake Bargatze, 24, went to a concert in Florida where he lived. He thought the crowd would be small. Bargatze was not vaccinated, and he did wear a mask. "Once I got in there, there was way too many and I got really hot, so I took it (mask) off, which probably wasn't the wisest decision on my part," Bargatze said.His mother Cheryl Nuclo wasn't happy with him."When I found out he went to that concert, I was pretty upset about it," Nuclo said.Two days later, Bargatze was diagnosed with COVID-19."I had a really bad headache and body aches and after that, I started having a really high fever -- went from 102 to 103 and up to 104," Bargatze said.On April 10, he was admitted to the hospital where it went downhill quickly. He had to be intubated and the coronavirus was damaging his lungs. His mother had him flown to his native Atlanta where she lived. That's where Bargatze got bad news."They gave the choice saying, 'We could either get a double lung transplant, which is the only way you have to survive or we're going to make you comfortable enough so you can pass,'" Bargatze said.Bargatze decided to fight."He couldn't get out of bed, he couldn't walk -- he could raise his fingers, basically," Nuclo said.After making inquiries all over, Bargatze finally decided on the University of Maryland Medical Center since they had done two successful double lung transplants on COVID-19 patients."He was young, determined, willing to move to Baltimore," said Dr. Robert Reed, medical director for lung transplantation at University of Maryland School of Medicine.Reed said they thought they could help Bargatze."His lungs looked awful. They looked like little chunks of liver. They didn't look like lungs at all, they were red, they were foggy. There was no saving those lungs," Reed said. "COVID-19 just destroyed them just chewed them up."Bargatze got the transplant in June, went through rehab and is now living in Ellicott City with his mother while he recovers. He takes 50 pills a day."I just try to make the best of it. I'm here, I'm alive today and I'm thankful," he said.Bargatze said the pills he'll take for the rest of his life, and his scar will forever remind him of what he went through."I would strongly encourage getting the vaccine to protect yourself and your family, and if you're against the vaccine, at least be courteous and wear a mask wherever you go. This isn't always about ourselves, it's about the people around us," Bargatze said.