Shawn Fisher said he had his “a-ha moment and wow moment” at once – while lying in a nursing home bed, looking down at the tubes protruding from his torso, which were doing for him what his ravaged body couldn’t do. Keep him alive.

Decades of unbridled alcohol abuse caught up with Shawn one day in March 2016, when his advanced pancreatitis triggered a stroke. Over the next days, while his family prayed fervently, his bodily systems would begin to shut down, one by one, and doctors told everyone to prepare for the worst.