Twelve years ago, Jorge Bacardi received a double lung transplant from his donor Christopher. In the years following his lung transplant, the Bacardi executive was able to undertake outdoor activities and acknowledged that his lung capacity tested at 128 percent. Predeceased by his brothers Joaquin and Alberto, Jorge was survived by his sister Carmen and his wife Leslie Bacardi. Jorge Bacardi passed away on September 23, 2020, at his home in the exclusive gated community Lyford Cay in the Bahamas. They also helped fund the production of ‘2 Hearts’ in an effort to spread their incredible story and inspire people to become organ donors. As part of their gift, Jorge and his wife Leslie also started a fund for regenerative medicine research, so they could continue to support further research in the field that helped save Jorge’s life. The care house is aimed at helping long-term patients who require lodging during their treatment. In the years following his surgery, Jorge began to refer to Christopher as his “guardian angel, Gabriel,” and helped set up the Gabriel House of Care at the Mayo Clinic hospital in Jacksonville, Florida. The operation was a success and left Jorge, for the first time, breathing through a set of fully functioning lungs. Hence, after living with defective lungs for 64 years, Jorge underwent a 7-hour double lung transplant surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville on March 27, 2008. The death of Christopher Mark Gregory, who was an organ donor and passed away unexpectedly of a brain aneurysm at the age of 19, gave Jorge a set of lungs that matched. Left with very few options and with his health deteriorating, Jorge put himself on the waiting list for a lung transplant. In the late 1990s, however, it was realized that the initial diagnosis of Jorge’s condition had been inaccurate and that he suffered from a congenital disease called primary ciliary dyskinesia. However, Jorge pushed on with his difficult lungs and even made it past the age of 40, which doctors, again, had said was highly unlikely. You see, as a child, he was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, and doctors at the time predicted that he would not survive past the age of 7. However, throughout most of his life, he suffered from a lung condition that made the essential act of breathing a challenge and for which Jorge had to suffer repeated infections and undergo multiple surgeries to survive. Jorge spent several decades working for his family company and on its board of directors. He had two brothers, Jose Alberto and Jorge Enrique, and a sister, Carmen. Already part of a successful business empire, Jorge went on to study Economics at Stanford University and Industrial Engineering at Miami University. Born to Caridad and Joaquin Bacardi on April 6, 1944, in Santiago de Cuba, Jorge’s birth came in the same year that his family company expanded to the United States. Jorge Bacardi was a member of the Bacardi family, the eponymous owners of one of the world’s largest family-owned spirit companies.
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