Matt Millen, ex-Detroit Lions GM, reportedly needs heart transplant

We're in the middle of the 2018 NFL draft, and many Detroit Lions fans think back to the dark days of the Matt Millen era.

But this isn't a story chiding his draft history or personnel decisions.

According to the Morning Call in Pennsylvania, last summer, the former general manager was diagnosed with amyloidosis, a rare disease which, according to the Mayo Clinic, produces an abnormal protein in the bone marrow and is deposited in an organ or tissue.

For Millen, 60, that organ is his heart. The symptoms for him were shortens of breath and chest pain. He experienced them for six years before his diagnosis.

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The newspaper reports that Millen, 60, is in need of a heart transplant and undergoes chemotherapy every week as the lone way to treat this incurable disease.

The chemo is supposed to slow the production of amyloid, but, according to the Morning Call, after stopping those treatment for a few weeks this winter, Millen had to restart chemotherapy.

The newspaper also shared a moment of levity during Millen's bone-marrow test in Florida last year. The specialist Millen was seeing was from Detroit. So, of course, talk of home came up, and, at the time, the struggling Detroit Tigers.

“At least they’re not as bad as the Lions were a few years ago, when they didn’t win a game,” Millen recalls the doctor saying, not realizing the patient was Lions’ president and general manager for the first three weeks of that winless 2008 season. A nurse filled in the blanks.

“I’m glad you weren’t aware,” Millen joked.