SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — A baseball coach who almost died on the field in Renner is currently waiting for a new heart.

Shane Vanderloo is at the Organ Transplant Center at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.He went for a check up, but what doctor’s found put him in the hospital and on the transplant list. Now he can’t leave until he gets a new heart.

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We first met Vanderloo when he arranged to thank the two men who saved his life after he suffered a heart attack at the baseball field in Renner. He was alone doing field maintenance when he collapsed a year and a half ago. Jamie Sorum and Jeff Mott were driving by and just happened to see a lone figure lying face down on the field. They turned him over started CPR, shocked his heart with an AED and saved Shane’s life.

“I should not be here,” Vanderloo told us in 2023. “That’s just the bottom line, so I’m glad I am. There must be something else for me to do. That wasn’t my time.”Shane’s heart has been in bad shape for years, and it’s been getting worse.”That rod is going into my heart that way and there is a balloon in there and it is helping my heart deal with the pressures,” Vanderloo told us in a interview from the ICU in Omaha.”Putting me on a balloon pump, a mechanically assisted device automatically puts me at status two in the heart transplant list, so I am now just waiting for a heart,” said Vanderloo.

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His wife Tonia says she is nervous but hopeful.

“There is some good days and some bad days, I worry a lot, but I know the outcome will be good, we are in a good place here,” said Tonia.

“I’m at the point where I’m resigned to the fact that this has to happen in order for me to continue,” Vanderloo said.

He admits it is scary to think about the operation ahead, but takes comfort in the fact that his life was spared by providence 17 months ago

“Incredibly blessed to have those two guys come and do what they did because we wouldn’t be be talking now,” said Vanderloo.

Shane tells us the device keeping his heart going right now has a limit of 30 days, so all he and Tonia can do now is wait and keep hoping for a heart.

A GoFundMe page has been set up to offset the medical expenses the couple is facing. 

Cards & letters can be sent to Shane Vanderloo, Patient Mail Room #3850, P.O. Box 6159, Omaha, NE 68106-0159