Thankful To A Stranger

Liver Transplant Lengthens Richmond Woman's Life

By Rachel E. Sheeley

Staff writer

March 7, 2004

Wileen King can no longer lift her 4-year-old granddaughter into her arms, and she gets winded chasing the girl and her bicycle down the sidewalk.

However, King is there to see little Claire's arms reach for her and she is there to see her ride down the sidewalk.

A year ago, the death of a stranger gave King a second chance at life.

King received a liver transplant on Feb. 11, 2003.

The Richmond woman's experience has made her an advocate for organ donor participation and a proponent of education about hepatitis.

She was infected with hepatitis C through a blood transfusion in 1969, but the disease was dormant until 2001. Despite her transplant, King, 53, is still fighting the viral illness.

Hepatitis C is a liver disease caused by the hepatitis C virus, which is found in the blood and is transferred through blood or body fluids. It leads to chronic liver disease and infection in more than 70 percent of those infected, according to the National Center for Infectious Diseases. It is, according to the center, the leading indication for a liver transplant.

Other causes include cirrhosis of the liver caused by prescription and over-the-counter medications and chronic alcohol abuse.

A blood test can detect hepatitis C, but it was not until July 2001 that King even considered she needed a test.

One day she just didn't feel well. She was feverish and tired. King came home and went to bed early after a day as a customer service and sales representative at Woodruff Corp., a subsidiary of Primex Plastics. At about 11 p.m., she got up and asked a friend to take her to the emergency room.

It took a long time to discover the cause of her illness and when it was attributed to hepatitis C, she was admitted for a weeklong stay.

I was very scared, very unknowledgeable about what hepatitis C is. How did I get this disease and why did it attack only my liver?" King said.

King learned that although the liver can regenerate itself, the type of damage hepatitis C inflicts has it growing back in hard nodules that can't filter the blood. At her diagnosis, only 15 percent of King's liver was functioning.

King's daughter, Jessica O'Dell of Indianapolis, encouraged her mother to seek care from Indianapolis hepatology-gastroenterology doctor Paul Kwo of the Indiana University Medical Center. He first sprang the idea of a liver transplant on King.

You talk about something that knocks you right off the exam table," King said.

King said she never considered not having a transplant.

"I did it because I want to see my granddaughter graduate from kindergarten, from first grade, from college. I'm not afraid to die, but I certainly wasn't ready," King said.

Much of the next year was filled with tests and efforts to make her eligible for a transplant.

"It was kind of crazy," O'Dell said, "and a little overwhelming. We had a wonderful (transplant) coordinator who talked to us every time we saw Dr. Kwo, who would bring it down a little bit more to our terms. Going through the whole thing, the hardest part was there's so many ups and downs."

Because transplant recipients must be in the best health possible, King had a multitude of tests and examinations. The first problem she encountered was an abnormal result on a Pap smear. After seeing a specialist, that test returned normal.

The second, and most devastating problem, was the detection of a spot on her lung.

"(It) just about did me in as far as even being able to be on the transplant list," King said.

"That was the hardest," O'Dell said.

However, a biopsy proved the spot non-cancerous. Doctors told her that if it remained non-cancerous for three months, she would be eligible for the transplant list.

"The highs and the lows through that process were just tremendous," King said. "That's pretty tough to go through. But never give up hope."

King did not lose hope, but she was unable to work and affected by disease with symptoms such as extreme tiredness, jaundice and swelling. She learned that when the liver doesn't filter impurities from the blood properly, ammonia can build up. When it does, it can cloud thinking.

She recalls once turning her truck, nearly hitting a tree and really not realizing what she had nearly done. Another time, she put Preparation H on her toothbrush.

The possibility of a transplant became a reality on Jan. 23, 2003, when she received a beeper that would go off when a possible liver was available.

Donors and recipients are matched, according to the Indiana Organ Procurement Organization, through blood type, tissue type, body weight and body size. The recipient's illness and length of time on the waiting list also are considered.

On Feb. 10, 2003, King felt well enough to get out of the house and go for a drive. She was almost to Cincinnati when her beeper went off. There was a liver available.

"I think I went into shock," King said. "I had all those highs and lows at one time."

O'Dell remembers that day well.

"They actually called me first, and I was at the dentist's office. My boss called me and said they had a liver," O'Dell said.

Mother, daughter and friends coordinated their efforts, all to meet at the hospital. King decided not to drive home first but to go straight to IU Medical Center.

"I drove myself to Indianapolis, praying, with tears streaming down my face. It was cold and pouring down rain outside," King said.

Even at the hospital, it was a waiting game while the transplant team went to retrieve the organ, and King had more tests to make sure she was still an eligible recipient.

It was a long day. King, who'd skipped breakfast, missed lunch and wasn't allowed to eat dinner, said, "I was fine with all that waiting, but I was starved to death."

Finally, at about 12:30 a.m. King went into surgery. She remembers it as a huge room and remembers seeing medical personnel working with her new liver.

"They had my liver in their hands... I got to meet my liver before they put it in," she said. She even told the surgeon to "hold the onions."

O'Dell was told that it was a "textbook" surgery.

King doesn't remember the next three days.

When she finally did open her eyes, O'Dell was amazed at just how white the whites of her mother's eyes were. They had been jaundiced for so long.

King wasn't really in pain after the surgery, but she did face melancholy.

One night, when the hospital was quiet, "I lay there and cried in my bed. I thought, 'I can't go back and undo this. What have I done?'"

After a six-day hospital stay -- one day fewer than when she was diagnosed with hepatitis C -- King went to the home of her daughter and son-in-law to recover. She stayed for three months.

"She's pretty easy-going," O'Dell said, "but it was very intimidating because I had to change the dressings."

They also had to explain everything to curious little Claire, who learned to ask her grandmother if she needed "privacy" and to be sympathetic to her "boo-boo."

"My family and my friends all made it possible for me to get through this," King said. She also praises her employer and its insurance program. The organ procurement cost about $43,000 and the transplant cost about $150,000, she said.

Although she is now living with a functioning liver, King is still fighting the hepatitis C. She is taking medications to rid herself of the hepatitis, some similar to chemotherapy, and they often leave her worn out and unable to function.

She has bad days where she can't get off the couch and good days when she serves as a volunteer reader at Friends Fellowship Community.

However, she refuses to give in to the disease she has now determined came from the blood transfusion she had after having had medical complications at the birth of her daughter.

"It's a deadly but silent killer," King said. "I'm going to clear the virus, slay that ugly dragon."

In hindsight, there were indications such as occasional sharp abdominal pains, tiredness and jaundice.

"I was sleeping a lot more, but I thought that was old age," King said.

King was not a person who got regular doctor's check-ups. Now, she advocates them.

Just as she and her daughter advocate being an organ donor.

"I was always an organ donor before," O'Dell said. "Now I'm like a full donor. It's definitely a personal preference. I think for a lot of people, it's a very sensitive issue.

"Since I've gone through it, I know why I want to do it," O'Dell said. "I want to be able to save someone else's life.

"I never knew so many people needed transplants. You just go into these waiting rooms and they're just packed," O'Dell said.

King received one of 505 organs transplanted in Indiana that came from 156 donors in 2003, according to the Indiana Organ Procurement Organization.

"I was very fortunate," King said. "My philosophy is never look back. I can't go through it again.

"The liver came from a small man who was in this country seeking political asylum. He had a stroke at age 24," she said.

On July 4, last year, one day before her own birthday, she remembered him, the freedom he sought and the second chance it gave her.

"There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about my donor," she said. "What a wonderful thing that he's done that someone not even from this country would do so that someone in this country could have their miracle. I hope that's some comfort for that family."

About Hepatitis C

Hepatitis C is unrelated to the viruses that cause hepatitis A and B. The most common transmission occurs through the transmission of infected blood such as blood transfusions before 1992, illegal injection drug use, solid organ transplantation from infected donors, unsafe medical practices, occupational exposure to infected blood, birth from an infected mother, high-risk sexual practices, body piercing, tattooing and intranasal cocaine use.

Sixty to 70 percent of those infected have no noticeable symptoms. The symptoms are much the same for hepatitis C as they are for hepatitis A and B.

Source: Indiana Department of Health Web site, www.in.gov/isdh

Hepatitis C infection has declined from 240,000 in the 1980s to about 25,000 in 2001.

About 3.9 million Americans have been infected with hepatitis C and 2.7 million of them are chronically infected.

Source: Centers for Disease Control, National Center for Infectious Diseases, Web site, www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/hepatitis/c/fact.htm.

Copyright © 2004 Palladium-Item.

This article posted March 23, 2004.