(CNN) -- If all goes according to plan, cancer survivor Kyle Garlett will compete in October's Ford Ironman World Championship, a grueling triathlon made up of a 2.4-mile ocean swim, a 112-mile bicycle ride and a 26.2-mile run. Heart transplant recipient and cancer survivor Kyle Garlett will compete in October's Ironman World Championship. And he'll do it with another man's heart pumping in his chest. "I don't think there's anybody who wouldn't consider me a success story and a survivor," Garlett said. His medical issues began in 1989 when he received his first Hodgkin's disease diagnosis as a high school senior. In 1995, during his third battle with the cancer, doctors ceased his chemotherapy treatment when they discovered it had weakened his heart.
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Cancer survivor and transplant recipient Kyle Garlett will compete in Kona triathlon
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Last year, Dwight Kroening was first person with heart transplant to finish Ironman
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The lack of nerves on a donor heart poses an extra challenge for transplant patients
Kyle Garlett
Kyle Garlett
Garlett
Kyle Garlett
Two years later, @placeholder learned he had secondary leukemia as a result of chemotherapy to treat the Hodgkin's, and three more years of chemotherapy ensued.
Hodgkin
Two years later, Garlett learned he had secondary leukemia as a result of chemotherapy to treat the @placeholder's, and three more years of chemotherapy ensued.
Kyle Garlett
Kyle Garlett
Garlett
Kyle Garlett
A heart transplant may seem extremely daunting, but @placeholder saw it as a more hopeful operation than his years of cancer treatments.
Dwight Kroening
@placeholder, now 49, got a new heart in 1986 after his swelled to about twice its normal size for unknown reasons.
Kyle Garlett
Kyle Garlett
Garlett
Kyle Garlett
@placeholder, too, recognizes his donor's family, who provided the heart of a 42-year-old construction worker who died on the job.