He was only 14, but Richard Patterson had already had enough of life.

The Alpharetta resident had undergone 11 major heart surgeries, so when doctors told him in 1988 that he needed a transplant, he said "no."

File photo (ENLARGE)

Heart transplant recipient Richard Patterson celebrated with other patients and their families at Heart to Heart.

"I was totally against it," he remembered. "I wasn't ready to fight anymore. They told me I had six months to live, and I didn't care."

Then a doctor reminded him, "Richard, if you don't do this, you'll never get to run across the yard with your dogs."

"I stopped him in midsentence and said I'd do it," Patterson recalled. The pug-loving kid saw a reason to go on.

In February at the Georgia Aquarium, Patterson, 33, celebrated that decision and the life he's led since.

He gathered with nearly 300 people, including other heart transplant recipients, their families and friends, and caregivers and staff from Children's Healthcare of Atlanta and Emory Healthcare at the 20th annual Heart to Heart event.

"It's an opportunity for transplant recipients to get together and celebrate their lives and their successes," said Emory spokesman Lance Skelly. "They can get the word out that, 'hey, I'm a living example. If I can do it, anybody can.' "

An aquarium ballroom was filled with transplant recipients who had unique stories to tell.

Jill Holland, 29, told how she needed a transplant, even though she was not born with a heart problem. Holland, of Clermont in North Georgia, was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer when she was 3. Chemotherapy beat back the cancer, but the drugs severely weakened her heart by the time she'd reached her teens.

Rigorous physical activity — including her passion, cheerleading — were out. She worried that she'd never be married. A lot of people thought, she said, "that it was the end of the world."

But a transplant in 2003, she said, "has given me a whole new life."

Holland got married, she has a job, and she even gets to run around in the backyard with her niece.

"Don't think there's anything you can't get over," she said. "Because you can."

— This article is a reprint from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.