New Meaning from a Chance Meeting

By the time Borges had his auspicious meeting with Shapiro, three years had passed since his remarkable recovery. He had enrolled at Booth and was enjoying life, traveling and skiing, with plans to open his own private-equity firm after graduation and a growing interest in healthcare after his experience as a patient. Parenteral nutrition—essentially bags of nutrients from Option Care Health, fed into his body via a port in his chest, mostly while he sleeps—makes it all possible.

“Having the privilege of helping someone like Luccas live his life and pursue a meaningful career is beyond rewarding,” Shapiro says. “To know that we support such an extraordinary young man’s life and all the things he’s working toward is a source of considerable pride.”

For Borges, meeting Shapiro felt like finding the last missing piece of a puzzle. After his recovery, he had spent months meeting with nearly every small-intestine transplant surgeon in the country, but found out that such operations are rare as well as complicated and risky. Instead, Borges turned to parenteral nutrition technology. Once his health improved, Borges returned to thank the EMTs, doctors, and nurses who saved his life. He even gave talks on treatment pathways for severe intestinal failure at medical conferences across the country, and counseled patients to inform themselves and be their own advocate.

But Borges had yet to meet a pharmaceutical executive or see how his parenteral nutrition was made. Shapiro invited Borges to tour Option Care Health’s facilities, meet the pharmacists, and speak to employees at the company’s annual meeting. Borges met people working in procurement and the supply chain, and he waved through a window to pharmacists who were formulating life-saving infusions in the sterile compounding pharmacy. Borges expressed gratitude to everyone he met.

“There is meaning to each step in the company’s process,” he says. “It’s not just a regular business. It really does affect patients’ lives.”

After touring the facility, Borges delivered the keynote speech at the meeting. Attendees were visibly moved by Borges’s story.

Shapiro and Borges have maintained their relationship, collaborating on everything from creating instructional videos to speaking with patient-advocacy groups. Option Care Health brings in more than $4 billion a year in revenue and serves more than 270,000 patients, but Shapiro says that meeting Borges has been a vivid reminder that the company’s work is about more than money. It’s about helping people.

“Behind every one of those dollars and digits is a Luccas,” Shapiro says. “It’s a miracle that he’s with us today. You can’t take one day for granted.”

Borges, now 26, has gone skiing every year since the accident, although at first he didn’t tell anyone he had returned to the slopes. Since he earned his MBA, he and a partner have been busy fundraising to meet their $75 million goal for their startup, Union Industrial Co., a Dallas-based firm focused on private equity and real-estate development. He also joined the board of directors of the Oley Foundation, a national nonprofit home nutrition therapy community and advocacy group based in Albany, New York.

Throughout his recovery, Borges has stayed focused on his path forward. “It’s been powerful to focus on what hasn’t changed,” he says. “And I feel that it is a gift to still do the hobbies I enjoy, live the life I want to live, and pursue a career in business investments rather than seeing anything as a setback.” In the hospital, Borges recalls asking himself, “What’s left of me?” The question has turned out to have a hopeful answer, in part thanks to the connections he’s made along the way—with doctors, with Shapiro, and with the community at Booth.