A major medical breakthrough at an Augusta hospital. Surgeons at MCGHealth have successfully transplanted a heart for the first time.

Freddie McCullum just got the biggest birthday gift he could ever ask for.

"You have four valves in your heart. I was on the last one and they couldn't fix it," he said.

He was fighting a death sentence handed to him a year ago, congestive heart failure.

"Things kept getting worse and worse and worse. I couldn't go up and down the stairs," he said.

Freddie's year long fight for survival eventually landed him at MCGHealth and in the care of Dr. Kevin Landolfo, the Director of MCGHealth's heart transplant team.

"There's no question that he had only a few short days to live at the time we were able to have a heart become available,” Dr. Landolfo said.

With Freddie's days numbered, four years of a carefully choreographed plan was about to take shape and make history inside an operating room at MCGHealth.

It would give Freddie a new heart and a second chance at life.

"I wasn't worried. I was willing to take that chance because I wasn't ready to go," McCullum said.

It took the team of surgeons less than an hour to replace Freddie's diseased heart with a donor's healthy heart.

"Bring a new heart from someone else, put it in the recipient and to start seeing it beating, that's very exciting," Dr. Vijay Patel of MCGHealth said.

"In this case, things went about as smooth as we could ask for. Everything and everybody preformed at a high level," Dr. Landolfo said.

And a week after the historic and successful transplant, Freddie and his wife are praising the doctors and a much higher power for saving his life.

"He's a walking miracle as well as a walking testimony for those who feel like they can't make it," Freddie’s wife, Shirley McCullum said.

"I'm here for a reason. What that reason is, only God knows. He just wasn't ready for me yet," Freddie said.

Freddie's transplant and eight others will be performed free of charge as part of a certification process at MCGHealth.

MCGHealth is now the only hospital outside of Atlanta currently performing heart transplants in Georgia.