Former Bengals and Buccaneers coach Sam Wyche is out of surgery and “doing great” after a donor heart was found and he underwent transplant surgery.
Wyche went into surgery early Tuesday morning, and the procedure took around four and a half hours. His family posted on Facebook that he was in recovery and doing well.
His children told WLWT in Cincinnati that Wyche had just been told by doctors he was about a week away from being sent home with hospice, before the donor match was found.
“I pretty much thought most of the day was, he was going to end up passing away and then found out he was hopefully going to get a new heart, which it turned out he did,” Kerry Wyche said. “I told my kids last night when they were saying prayers to say an extra prayer to the donor family. Even though we’re celebrating, they’re preparing for a funeral. And so I, I pray for them as well.”
His son Zak, who is an assistant coach at a Cincinnati high school, said his team had just prayed for his father just as the news came in.
“Football team prayed for my father yesterday at the end of practice, and he said it’s about the same time when the doctor came in and they’d found a heart for him,” Zak Wyche said.
Wyche is recovering in a Charlotte hospital, where he was in the same room as Panthers owner Jerry Richardson when he got his heart transplant in 2009.