Fast Liver

By Dan Egan

The Salt Lake Tribune

SISTERS OR -- The jury duty notice was on the fridge for weeks, but Chris Klug got good at ignoring it -- not hard for a guy who fishes, bikes and surfs away his summer days.

The 27-year-old makes his living during the winter as one of the country's fastest snowboarders. He is a 1998 Olympian and the man who may own America's best chance for a men's medal in the alpine events of the 2002 Winter Games.

But the serious business of jury duty busted into the off-season fun in July as Klug was dashing out the door for a day of water-skiing. Good thing the notice finally caught his eye, because this was the day he was scheduled to report to the courthouse.

The strapping athlete did what quite a few other people in his situation would. He burst into a clerk's office with an excuse.

"I'm sick," he said.

"Get a note from the doctor," replied the skeptical clerk.

Klug was back in a flash with the scribbled signature. Then he and his buddies roared off and "ripped it" on their water skis all afternoon.

The next day, Klug was called again. This time not to the courthouse, but to the hospital.

Klug was rushed to Denver for a six-hour liver transplant surgery, a procedure in which, he now says with a grin not nearly as wide as the scar across his belly, "they cut me in half."

Klug is America's fastest giant slalom snowboarder, but the speed stops when he leaves the mountains. By all accounts, his lifestyle is as clean as his arced turns that boarders imitate at resorts across the country.

Klug confesses to one addiction: ice cream.

He is a devout Episcopalian who turned down opportunities to play quarterback in college for a career in the mountains.

Coaches gush when asked to assess his character.

"Honest, forthright, always positive and always a gentleman," said coach Nick Smith. "He is a model for all of us."

It is no wonder the snowboard world was stunned this summer when it learned Klug long had suffered from a potentially fatal liver disease.

On July 28, surgeons carved out Klug's shriveled liver and replaced it with that of an anonymous 13-year-old boy who most likely died of a head injury.

Klug was told he would need this surgery seven years earlier, after he was diagnosed with a rare degenerative liver disease called primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC). It is the same mysterious bile duct-blocking condition that ultimately killed NFL great Walter Payton last year.

Payton's illness progressed into cancer, possibly because he wasn't diagnosed with PSC until it was too late for a transplant.

Klug, on the other hand, got word of his ailment as a seemingly healthy 20-year-old when a routine physical showed elevated enzyme levels in his blood.

The doctors asked if he was a heavy drinker.

No, he said. He barely ever drank.

It took a perplexed medical staff nearly two years of tests to diagnose him with PSC, a disease that has no known cause and affects about one in 10,000 people.

Doctors said he needed a transplant, but they couldn't say when. It could be in five years, it could be 20 years.

Shocking News

A stunned Klug didn't buy it. Like most 20-year-olds, he fancied himself as invincible. At a chiseled 6 foot 2 inches and 210 pounds, Klug also looked it.

"I remember asking them: 'Are you sure you got the right guy?' " he recalled. "I felt like a million bucks. I didn't have a single symptom."

Despite the diagnosis, Klug pressed on with his racing career while keeping the disease a secret from everybody but his family, coaches and closest friends.

But the disease proved stronger than denial, and about three years ago doctors told Klug it was time to go on a transplant list, despite the fact he still didn't feel ill. He didn't take it well.

"I said, 'You're nuts! Isn't that jumping the gun?' " Klug recalled, hinting his language was stronger than that. "He [the doctor] took all my crap, and then said: 'All right. You're going on the list.'"

Klug's health steadily began to fail. First it felt like a touch of the flu. Then pains shot through his right side and he often felt too ill to eat.

He used to swallow whole pizzas in minutes. Now it took him up to an hour to finish a meal.

And Klug's troubles on the inside began to show on the outside. By last year, 20 pounds had slipped from his hulking frame.

Yet Klug kept racing, and just this past winter he posted the best season in his 10-year career. He won the national championship in giant slalom as well as a World Cup race in Germany. He climbed the podium at three other World Cup races.

Only now does Klug hint at how hard the past year was.

One of the worst moments came as he was driving to Salt Lake City from Aspen last November. As he was descending the treacherous Soldier Summit between Price and Spanish Fork, word came over the radio that Walter Payton had died.

Klug nearly crashed as he tried to pull over and collect himself. It was one of the few times he cried.

He had written Payton after the NFL Hall of Fame running back announced he had the disease about a year earlier. Don't worry, he told him. I've got the disease, too. And it's not the end of the world.

But for Payton, it was.

"For the first time, I was really scared," Klug said.

He had good reason to be. While he waited for a new liver, Klug had to be "roto rootered" -- a procedure in which doctors periodically stuck a tube down his throat and dilated his bile ducts. First, it was a once a year deal. Then it was every six months, then every two.

When the racing season ended last spring, doctors told him they could do no more. It was transplant time. Klug's status on the donor recipient list was bumped to urgent.

Klug returned to Aspen at the beginning of last summer. He was given a beeper and told to carry it with him 24 hours a day. When he got the call, he would have to leave for Denver immediately. Missing the call could mean a matter of life and death, yet he continued to keep fit during a stage of the disease that often leaves people bedridden.

"I was really sick," he said. "But I was able to work out, to stay active."

Girlfriend Missy April considers that an understatement.

His training sessions, she said, "were as hard-core as hard-core gets."

They included five-hour bike rides straight up the mountains above Aspen, followed by weightlifting sessions and then maybe a game of volleyball.

By late July the disease had progressed so far that some days Klug could barely play a round of golf. On the worst days, he could do little more than lie on the couch. So he played chess. And prayed.

The physical discomfort, however, was nothing compared to the psychological stress. It isn't easy waiting for someone to die so you can live.

Word finally came while Klug was in the middle of a light workout at an Aspen fitness club. The trusted beeper failed to beep. But Klug heard his phone ring in the locker room and the caller ID showed it was the medical team in Denver.

He hopped on a plane and was in surgery the next day.

The day after that he was "doing laps" around the hospital ward, despite the fact he had to wheel along with him an octopus of tubes protruding from his body.

Fast Recovery

"He recovered exceptionally well because he is so physically fit," said Tracy Steinberg, his transplant coordinator in Denver. "We don't get many Olympic athletes."

But Steinberg noted even exceptionally fit transplant patients can spend months in the hospital following surgery.

Klug was out in four days, a record time. He was riding a stationary bike a week after the surgery.

In September, he resumed snowboarding on the glacial slopes of Oregon's Mount Hood.

"Just like riding a bike," he said, referring to his return to a sport he first picked up as seventh-grader.

His coaches said they were "blown away" by Klug's physical condition at the training camp. And, perhaps more importantly, they said he is mentally much stronger than he was before the operation.

Doctors say there is every indication that Klug will lead a normal -- and long -- life. The only hitch is he must take medication three times a day to prevent his body from rejecting the liver. The doses likely will diminish over time, but it is a routine he must follow for the rest of his life.

Klug doesn't mind. He said the moment he opened his eyes following surgery, he knew he was healthier than he had been in years.

"It was almost like having the engine falling apart in your car. Then they put in a brand-new one."

His hope is that this coming season will be his best ever, but just a prelude to the 2002 Games.

"That's my goal: to be the first Olympic champion with an organ transplant," he said.

And his plan is to turn that podium into a pulpit and stump for more organ donors.

Klug's life is all about speed, but within the next couple of weeks he plans to slow down, put pen to paper and write one hell of a thank you note to the parents of the 13-year-old boy who donated the liver.

Klug's pale blue eyes wet a bit when talk turns to that. He has his health, his future. The parents have only memories. He frets he won't be able to describe the depth of his gratitude.

"Humbling," is the best word he could muster after a long pause.

Copyright © 2000 The Salt Lake Tribune.

This article posted November 5, 2000.