Cloud of Witnesses Radio

Declared Dead Twice: Double-Lung Transplant & a Second Chance at Faith | Kyle David Interview

• Cloud of Witnesses cast and crew • Episode 114

Share episode

When the Beat Stopped: The One Who Found His Faith Again

Before the hospital gowns and machines, Kyle David kept time for a living—a professional drummer and percussionist whose life moved in rhythm. Then a hurricane evacuation from New Orleans spiraled into a fight with COVID pneumonia, and the beat of everyday life stopped.

What followed was a grueling medical odyssey: three hospitals, 50 days in ICU, a month-long coma, and moments when he was declared clinically dead—twice. Doctors said his only chance was a double-lung transplant. Airlifted to San Diego, Kyle spent nearly seven months learning to breathe, speak, and walk again.

Somewhere in that long valley, Kyle’s faith cracked. He prayed what felt like his last honest prayer:
“Lord, either heal me miraculously now—or let me come home. I can’t do this another day.”
Silence seemed to answer back. For the first time, the drummer who had grown up with church in his bones felt the tempo of belief slipping away.

Then came the moment he thought might be his last. During a brief outing from the hospital, Kyle’s portable life-support machine failed. With a tracheostomy tube and seconds to spare, he rose from his wheelchair and shouted so nurses and his mother could hear:
“Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior.”

If this was the end, he wanted his final words to be his clearest.

Days later, a matching set of donor lungs became available. On March 3, 2022, surgeons performed the transplant that saved his life. Recovery was slow and humbling—scales and rudiments, but for breathing. Yet as his lungs healed, something deeper healed, too. The God who seemed silent in the ICU met him again—quietly, steadily, mercifully.

Kyle describes what happened next as a re-tuning of his soul. The brushes became sticks; the metronome clicked again. His near-death season led him into the ancient prayers and steady rhythms of Eastern Orthodox worship, where he found a church that helped him rebuild his life in Christ with reverence, beauty, and community.
“If I hadn’t walked through that fire,” Kyle says, “I might never have discovered this path. My suffering became a blessing in disguise.”

Kyle’s story is more than a medical miracle. It’s a testimony for anyone who’s suffered long, doubted hard, and wondered if the music of faith was finished. God did not waste the silence. He used it to write a new song.

Hear the full conversation on Cloud of Witnesses—Kyle’s journey from a failing heartbeat to a living hope, from the edge of unbelief to a renewed confession of Jesus as Lord. Subscribe for more stories of lives transformed when grace meets the impossible.

Find an Orthodox Church near you today. Visit https://www.antiochian.org/home 

Questions about Orthodoxy? Please check out our friends at Ghost of Byzantium Discord server: https://discord.gg/JDJDQw6tdh

Please prayerfully consider supporting Cloud of Witnesses Radio: https://www.patreon.com/c/CloudofWitnesses

Find Cloud of Witnesses Radio on Instagram, X.com, Facebook, and TikTok.

Please leave a comment with your thoughts!

Speaker 1:

And I thought I was about to die. So I wanted to have kind of my deathbed proclamation, my statement, the last words, and I remember getting up from my wheelchair and just loud as day speaking those words Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior. And I repeated it so loudly because I wanted all the nurses to hear this. I wanted my mother to hear this so she wouldn't be concerned about what was going to happen to me if I died then and there, because I was fully convinced that I was about to leave this earth. There were points where I just I wanted to give up living and I told God either heal me miraculously, like right now, or just allow me to die, because I can't keep living and surviving in these conditions in the hospital, day after day, like I'd rather just die than go through another day of this. So either miraculously heal me now or just let me die, yeah, please.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for being here. We have quite a story for you today. Kyle David is a survivor of a double lung transplant. Survivor of a double lung transplant and this event in his life really saved his faith as well as, as you'll hear him describe, brought him to orthodoxy. It's a powerful story. We look forward to you, god willing, enjoying it and being edified by it.

Speaker 2:

This was going to be released actually much sooner, but then the assassination of Charlie Kirk occurred and that has sent shockwaves, certainly you know, across this country. We do hope and pray that Cloud of Witnesses will continue to speak out in many ways that Charlie Kirk, I think, would appreciate and, would you know, hopefully also agree with and find edifying. Now, of course, cloud of Witnesses does not agree with Charlie Kirk on everything, far from it, and we tend to not get very political on this channel. That being said, certainly Charlie would be happy to know that the gospel continues to be preached, that we continue to God willing, as faithfully as possible, to share Christ's reality, christ's redemptive work in the life of his people here on earth through his church, and we do ask that, if you are enjoying this content, don't forget. The full, unedited clip of this interview is available right now over at our Patreon. That's Cloud of Witnesses over on Patreon and you can see the entire unedited clip right now.

Speaker 1:

We hope that you enjoy it, god and Christ, and how immediate both of those things were in my life Because, given the fact that I was still going to church, there was still not a true heart transformation and I still wasn't willing to die to my old self. So basically, after making a series of very reckless and poor decisions and becoming gravely ill at the time with COVID pneumonia and the complications that resulted from that, I got hospitalized in East Texas at the time, with COVID pneumonia and the complications that resulted from that. I got hospitalized in East Texas at the time when I was actually evacuating from New Orleans from a hurricane at the time that was about to hit the city and I was taking shelter in Texas in multiple different cities, kind of just couch surfing with people that I knew, place to place, living on the road, living very recklessly, going on a bender and just not taking health or prioritizing my safety and just basically just making a series of irrevocably bad decisions that led to me getting extremely and utterly sick, getting hospitalized in three different cities. First leg of that journey was in Tyler, texas, in East Texas, and I stayed there for one week and at that point my complications from the virus were ravaging my respiratory system and my pulmonary system. So I had to be placed on an ECMO, which is basically kind of like an external mechanism life support for my heart and my lungs and that's when I got airlifted to Shreveport, louisiana, and I spent 50 days there in the ICU.

Speaker 1:

And some patients, when they're on that contraption, they sometimes recover, but in my case my sickness was so extensive that they basically informed me that my only way to survive was to get a double lung transplant. So I was airlifted from Shreveport to San Diego and actually went to the hospital of my alma mater at UCSD and I spent almost seven months there in the ICU relearning how to walk and talk and breathe again, because I was put into a medically induced coma. So almost about a month of being in a coma I like lost the ability to basically move any and every part of my body. All my muscles had atrophied and had to relearn how to walk again, get up out of bed again, pick up a pen again. And it was only after I had made progress with that that I was eligible to receive a lung transplant and that's ultimately what saved my life, and there were at least two occasions where I actually died on paper because my heart stopped and I had no pulse. So on paper I was dead.

Speaker 1:

This happened twice while I was in a coma, so I have no recollection of this. And it was only when I was in San Diego at this point out of the coma, fully cognizant that this is before my transplant surgery. And I fully remember this because my life support machine died while I was just kind of out and about one day I just wanted to get some sunlight and they made a special provision for me to be able to leave the hospital it's not protocol, but that's what happened and my portable life support machine the battery, died after about five or 10 minutes. So I literally felt the essence and the life force just leave my body because this machine was keeping me alive. And, yeah, within 10 minutes I could definitely feel like I was about to leave this earth and I was about to perish on the spot. And I just remember the last thing that I was able to say, and I had a tracheostomy for a breathing tube at the time, so it normally restricted my ability to have any type of verbalization because of this thing that was in my throat. And I remember I was able to override this thing that was blocking my voice and I thought I was about to die.

Speaker 1:

So I wanted to have kind of my deathbed proclamation, my statement, the last words, and I remember getting up from my wheelchair and just loud as day speaking those words Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior. And I repeated it so loudly because I wanted all the nurses to hear this, I wanted my mother to hear this so she wouldn't be concerned about what was going to happen to me if I died then and there, because I was fully convinced that I was about to leave this earth. And that was the last thing I remember before I was sedated and they had to switch out the life support machine and I woke up like 15 minutes later, as if I just woken up from a nap, like almost like, as if none of that had happened. So just the fact that I could have and should have died multiple times but I didn't, and just proclaiming the name of Jesus Christ over my life, over everything that I had been through in that moment, like kind of made me realize that, okay, there must be something more to all of this. Like if God wanted me to pass away, then it would have happened a long time ago, but I'm still here.

Speaker 1:

What's the deal? So all glory to God that I received my lung transplant. I lived another day, and it was only, I think, within the week that I received the final news that I was about to receive the right lungs. Everything was going to match for my system. So I received my lung transplant surgery and that's the only reason that I'm here, breathing, talking alive, today was from the power of Christ the healer, and so for me, that was the nail in the coffin. Like that, any doubts or questions or skepticisms like my life became the living testimony, like the fact that I'm alive and breathing is the miracle from God. So all of that made me realize that this is real. There's no way that anybody on heaven or earth can convince me otherwise.

Speaker 3:

Wow, I had no idea Kyle is absolutely. It is miraculous, this story, Uh, and I'm I'm honored to be talking with you right now.

Speaker 1:

I'm honored to share it, Jeremy.

Speaker 3:

Thank you for doing this. Um um, how long ago was the lung transplant surgery?

Speaker 1:

This was not that long ago. It was March 3rd 2022. So a little more than three years ago by now. And that's what brought me here, back to San Diego, and this is like my home base. Going forward, I don't plan to relocate anytime soon. I'm just blessed by God to have kind of respawned in this city, in this environment, where I have friends, where I have family, I have community here. So, to me, I won the lottery of life, being able to have a second chance, a second lease on life, and that's kind of what ultimately also made me realize that I have to put the old man away. I have to die to myself. I can't keep living like how I was living, and this is something that I actually do need to take seriously, because God didn't give me a second chance to squander it again.

Speaker 1:

Because, yeah, the surgeon said that that was arguably one of like the nicest air of lungs that he's like ever seen. So, yeah, basically, god selected the right lungs for me, for me to survive. Wow, yeah, but it was a roller coaster. You know it was a roller coaster, like you go to jail, for example, or go to prison. You have like a definite day unless you're sentenced for life. But there's a day that you know, okay, I just have to serve my time and I'll be out. If you're seven months or seven years, when you're on that waiting list like there is no end in sight, it's like you're just in the dark, you're like going through the tunnel and there's no way that you're seeing. Okay, I see the light at the end of the tunnel, not until you get the offer for the lungs and, assuming it goes through, that's when you're first able to see that glimmer at the very tail end. But until that point you're just completely, each day's groundhog day, you're just trying to survive in the hospital and it's, it's insane. I wouldn't wish it upon my worst enemy, you know.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, but honestly I was thinking about it the other day that if I hadn't gone through what I had gone through, realistically, my timeline, there's no way to guarantee that I would have been able to discover the Orthodox Church and, like, kind of like, discover my faith again. And I'd probably go through that all over again to be able to experience what I experienced honestly, because if I never went through that then I would have never discovered the Orthodox Church. So to me it was like just a huge blessing in disguise, where I had to suffer. I had to go through unimaginable experiences that, yeah, it was a lot, it was very traumatic, it was extreme.

Speaker 1:

There were points where I just, yeah, I wanted to give up living. I told God either heal me miraculously, like right now, or just allow me to die, because I can't keep living and surviving in these conditions in the hospital, day after day, like I'd rather just die than go through another day of this. So either miraculously heal me now or just let me die, please. And God responded, he said okay. And within a few days I got that offer and that was the one that was my golden ticket to get out of the hospital and survive. And, yeah, I'm the result of that today.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for watching this long into the video. Please remember you can go see the entire unedited clip right now over at our Patreon. We sat down with Kyle David for well over an hour. That entire conversation is available at our Patreon right now. Please, if you liked this video, give it a like. Please subscribe. It helps others find this content. As always, ring that bell and, most importantly, we do hope to get your thoughts and comments down below. We always enjoy speaking with you guys and we look forward to the next one, in God's grace. Bye-bye, god bless.