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Steve Gillman
REAL ESTATE BROKER AND PARTNER, THE SHOPPING CENTER GROUP
espite undergoing three heart surger- ies (one of which was open heart) in less than two years, retail real estate broker and The Shopping Center Group partner Steve Gillman still hasn’t received a diagnosis for his mystery ailment. “The problem with me from a medical standpoint is there’s nothing they can do. I only know when something bad happens to me,”
Gillman, 54, says.
It all started on October 19, 2011. After playing bas-
ketball near his home in Merrick, New York, Gillman felt a pain in his chest. He went to his regular doctor, who referred him to a cardiologist—who sent him to North Shore University Hospital for a five-hour open-heart sur- gery to correct a blockage in his left main artery.
After the surgery, Gillman was ready to get back to work. “I took phone calls in the hospital the day after getting out of the operating room,” he says. “You don’t want to brag that you’re sick, and you don’t want people to think that you’re so sick you can’t take care of your clients. I probably downplayed it a little.”
But after returning home, Gillman developed a toxic reaction to an anti-arrhythmic medication he was put on. He couldn’t breathe. “They figured out there was a more serious problem,” he says. The doctors gave Gillman different heart medication, and he returned to work part- time, even going to the New York International Council of Shopping Centers—a networking membership group for retail real estate professionals—six weeks after the open- heart surgery.
“Fortunately, with technology, the world has gotten a little easier to not have to be in the office all the time,” he says. “I can’t do everything remotely, but with iPads and cellphones, I think, for the most part, I did a decent job keeping my clients happy.”
In March 2012, Gillman developed an infection in his chest and had a second surgery. After a week in the hospital, his infection came back, and this past summer it returned again.
To make matters worse, during this time his mother
was suffering from stage IV lung and ovarian cancer.
Gillman decided not to tell her about his own illness.
“She was getting sicker and sicker, and the last thing she
needed was to worry that her son was sick. So we never > did tell her,” he says. “It’s another one of those little
quirks life throws you.” His mother died January 1.