The Niles Star

Nancy Brown, patient care manager of Women's and Children's Services at Lakeland Hospital in St. Joseph, received a liver transplant in June 2008. (Daily Star photo/JESSICA SIEFF)

‘It’s just a miracle’

By JESSICA SIEFF
Niles Daily Star

Part 2 of 3

The Michigan Organ Donor Registry is on a mission to grow its database by 1 million donors.

And behind every one of those donors’ names are countless lives of loved ones who are often faced with making what can be a difficult decision – to allow the organs of the ones they have lost to be harvested, saving the lives of others.

The lives of those recipients who face rounds of hospital visits and sometimes even death as they wait and hope for a transplant.

Recipients like Lakeland HealthCare’s Nancy Brown.

“I hadn’t been feeling really myself for a few days,” Brown remembered as she sat in the main lobby of Lakeland HealthCare in St. Joseph. It was June 2008.

“Nothing that I could put my finger on and really nothing that would make me feel alarmed,” she said. “But I thought I was brewing a little infection so I went to the doctor and she did some tests and she didn’t like the results. She said my liver enzymes were up and she wanted me to have a liver biopsy to see what was going on.”

Brown was diagnosed with autoimmune hepatitis, a conditions that attacks and essentially “destroys” the liver.

Asked if she ever thought she’d be in a position where she’d be in need of an organ transplant Brown, who said she had always had the thought to be a donor herself and encouraged her family to do the same, said, “Not in my wildest dreams.”

But that’s exactly what happened.

For three days doctors tried to conduct a biopsy on Brown’s liver.

“My blood wasn’t coagulating,” she said. “It wasn’t clotting because my liver wasn’t functioning right.”

Brown was admitted to Lakeland Hospital in St. Joseph, where she worked and is now patient care manager of Women’s and Children’s Services.

Three days after that, she was transferred to the University of Michigan “because I wasn’t getting better,” she said. “In fact, I was getting worse.”

Her condition worsened so severely that Brown doesn’t remember much of anything after she left St. Joseph. Three days after arriving in Ann Arbor, she woke up with a new liver.

The waiting period for patients in need of new organs can be excruciatingly long. In Brown’s case, the severity of her condition was such that she moved quickly up the list with the United Network for Organ Sharing.

Doctors told Brown that autoimmune hepatitis is usually diagnosed early.

“But every once in a while,” she said, “and I guess I’m one of the unlucky ones. It really hits suddenly and it goes out of control.

“I was going down to quickly that I got put on the waiting list for a new liver and within three hours, I got one. That is how critical I was,” Brown said. “But you know, it’s just a miracle that a matching donor was found that quickly even being that critical because even the doctors at U of M (University of Michigan) said that just doesn’t happen.”

Her doctors were surprised at how well her recovery came about following the surgery and she was discharged one week later, following some routine checkups after the transplant, Brown now only returns to have her condition monitored every six months.
Through Gift of Life, Brown was able to submit a letter to her donor family, something that took her some time to do. She doesn’t ignore the pain that can remain in the hearts of those who’ve lost their loved ones.

Still, she said, she showed gratitude to that family for their loved one’s immeasurable gift.
Gift of Life provides letters to donor families but recipients may never know who their donor is unless that family chooses to return contact and reveal themselves.

To those families who face the difficult decision of either making that choice or living with the choice that was made by the one they’ve lost, what would Brown say?

“I think that, having been a recipient, just the gift itself is so overwhelming,” Brown said. “I don’t think people have any idea how much it can help someone and I personally believe that as human beings we are put here to help each other and that’s one way we can do it.”

Hospitals and organizations such as Gift of Life walk a delicate line when it comes to dealing with families faced with loss and the potential of those who have been lost to serve as donors. Read more in Part 3 of the Star’s look at organ donation in Monday’s edition.