Premium content
PREMIUM CONTENT
Published Apr 15, 2020
LETTERS FROM DABO - Part 7
Larry Williams
Tigerillustrated.com

Tigerillustrated.com is offering a FREE TRIAL membership and unlimited access to our content until June 1.

This special promo offer is valid through April 30.

Sign up HERE to take advantage of this limited-time offer and get access immediately!

PROMO CODE: Dabo2020

For registered users not currently subscribed, sign up HERE to get the FREE TRIAL membership.

Dabo Swinney's extraordinary ability to lift a football program is known to everyone who even casually follows the sport.

But what about his gift, equally extraordinary, of lifting the spirits of those who are going through periods of struggle?

These to-date unpublicized gestures -- random acts of Dabo, if you will -- are very much worthy of being documented in a more official, complete form.

So Tigerillustrated.com reached out to a number of people who have shared their own behind-the-scenes stories with us.

ALSO SEE: LETTERS FROM DABO - Part 1 | LETTERS FROM DABO - Part 2 | LETTERS FROM DABO - Part 3 | LETTERS FROM DABO - Part 4 | LETTERS FROM DABO - Part 5 | LETTERS FROM DABO - Part 6

Here is Part 7

When Laney Duncan was a young child, she climbed into her father's lap and told him she didn't want a pacemaker in her stomach anymore.

"You've got to have it," Ron Duncan told his daughter. "That's what beats your heart."

She told her father again that she didn't want the pacemaker anymore. Her father told her again that her heart had to have it.

She relented by changing the subject and asking for some ice cream.

"That's the only time in her 14 years that she's ever complained," Ron said. "She doesn't know any different than what she's gone through."

Laney's lifetime of overcoming, of dealing with major challenges, predate her birth.

Her mother Misty went in for a normal 23-week pregnancy checkup. The doctors couldn't find Laney's heartbeat.

They found a different doctor 30 hours later and found the heartbeat. Misty was diagnosed with an asymptomatic case of Lupus, which caused third-degree congenital heart blockage in their unborn child.

Laney later introduced herself to the world at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta. Over the previous 22 years, there had been only two other babies born at MCG with the same condition. Both of them died within an hour of their births.

Subscribe to read more.
Unlock Premium news from the largest network of experts.
Say your piece in exclusive fan communities.
Dominate with stats, athlete data, Rivals250 rankings, and more.
Go Big. Get Premium.Log In