“Ashton went to his parents and said, ‘Take my heart.’ He said it truthfully. He really wanted to give it to his brother,” Dr. Agus then confirmed. “The person he loved most in the world, his brother, [was] going through this and he wasn’t able to… just push [Michael] along. He had helped his brother with cerebral palsy and some social issues at school, but now here’s an issue that he can’t fix.”
Michael’s life thankfully ended up being saved when an organ donor match was found within 24 hours and he received a heart transplant. His problems weren’t over then, though. He eventually developed a blood clot, two years later, and had to undergo heart surgery. The whole experience helped Ashton be grateful for his own health.
“I think standing on the balcony going, ‘I’m a match,’ that moment is probably the exact moment the shift took place,” Ashton added. “Where I’m like, ‘How do I get to be this lucky? And my brother to be born with cerebral palsy, then have a heart transplant, then have this random blood clot… Who has to go through that? How do I get to be this lucky?’”
“There was a moment in all of this where I moved to New York and was starting to get some traction with my career and Mike came out to visit and stay and he looked at me and he said, ‘Every time you feel sorry for me, you make me less. This is the only life I’ve ever known, so stop feeling sorry for the only thing I have,’” he went on. “That then created an entire shift back to where I think we are today, which is we’re straight up equals again. That’s it.”
Ashton first publicly revealed Michael had cerebral palsy in a 2003 interview, and although the latter was “angry” about it at first, he went on to see it as a “favor” that allowed him to live his true life. “[Ashton] did me the biggest favor he’s ever done because he allowed me to be myself,” Michael said in 2021.
Check out Ashton and Michael’s full interview in the video above.
