The wait worried the doctor. Without a transplant soon, there was a chance of death, LaMattina said. But one became available in June.
Before the surgery, Cassidy told his family, "We will win."
He told the team of doctors: "You know I'm a fighter."
"I heard you are a fighter," one responded.
The surgery went well, and LaMattina said Cassidy should live a normal life.
The jaundice he had been suffering from disappeared right after the surgery. Cassidy has had some complications common with transplants, including a hernia. And he will have to take drugs for the rest of his life to prevent his body from rejecting the new organ.
But those are small inconveniences, he and LaMattina said.
"Taking the medicine will become like brushing his teeth," said the doctor.
Those who know him said Cassidy has a natural resiliency.
"If anyone was going to pull through this, it was going to be him," said Terrence Patrick McLarney, a detective sergeant in the homicide unit when Cassidy was shot.
Simon said it would have been a tragedy if a liver hadn't been found for Cassidy — someone who has made such an imprint on Baltimore.
"We would have failed him if we had not gotten him a liver," Simon said.
Cassidy doesn't have a long bucket list now that he has eluded death twice. Throughout his latest ordeal, he said, all he wanted was a sense of normality. And it is still the simple things he looks forward to doing again, like going back to work and attending Ravens games, as he has every season since the team came to town.
He's not sure when he'll be strong enough to do either, but he hopes it is soon.
"You never know how many miracles you may see," Cassidy said. "I have to say I've seen one with this transplant."
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