photo by Geri McShane

JoAnn and LeRoy Everhard relax in their Albert Lea home last week. A rare procedure known as a domino liver transplant in April is credited with saving JoAnn’s life.

A new lease on life

Man’s diseased liver turns out to be local woman’s cure

By Geri McShane | Albert Lea Tribune

Published Saturday, October 17, 2009

Before 2006, JoAnn Everhard always considered herself a healthy person. She’d had a few routine surgeries, but nothing out of the ordinary.

But when she awoke one day and started dropping things, her husband, LeRoy, wondered if she’d had a stroke.

Doctors in Albert Lea weren’t sure just what was wrong, so they sent her to the Mayo Clinic.

There, doctors found her body was full of toxins. She couldn’t remember her own name.

Her liver was failing.

She was diagnosed on Sept. 29, 2006, with end-stage liver disease — nonalcoholic cirrhosis. JoAnn said doctors believe her disease was caused when her family was quarantined for yellow jaundice when she was in fifth grade. They now think she contracted hepatitis at that time.

At the point of her diagnosis, she was no longer able to keep her daily routine because she was so tired and weak. After several stages of evaluation, JoAnn was placed on the national liver transplant list in December of 2008.

Realistically, doctors didn’t think JoAnn would get a new liver. Any viable livers that became available would most likely go to younger patients first.

One day at the Albert Lea Family Y, she met a young woman who told her she could have half of hers. “And she told me if hers didn’t work, her husband’s would,” JoAnn recalled.

But it was then that doctors told JoAnn she really needed a whole liver.

As the years went by, JoAnn’s health grew worse. Still, she educated herself about the transplant process and lost weight.

“We prayed and prayed many times,” LeRoy recalled.

“I believe if we hadn’t prayed, I’d be gone by now,” JoAnn added.

On April 5, 2009, JoAnn got a call from a Mayo transplant surgeon offering a liver transplant.

“I couldn’t talk. I had to pass the phone to LeRoy,” JoAnn recalled.

This wasn’t, however, to be the normal type of liver transplant where the liver is taken from a deceased donor. This one was coming from a live donor. JoAnn would be receiving a domino liver transplant.

Domino liver transplants are named for the sequential one-after-another nature of the process, in which a viable liver from a deceased donor is transplanted into one person, then that person’s liver is transplanted into a second recipient. JoAnn’s transplant was only the fifth such liver transplant Mayo Clinic has done. It’s estimated there have been fewer than 100 of these transplants done in the U.S.

JoAnn’s donor needed both a new liver and a new heart, but doctors believed JoAnn could live quite well with the liver. It wasn’t a liver that they would consider putting in a young person, she added.

“I was told this liver should last me 30 years,” JoAnn said. “I’m 71. I think 30 years is pretty good.”

The donor liver was a perfect fit. The surgery took 5 1/2 hours.

After two weeks in Rochester Methodist Hospital, JoAnn was discharged to the House of Hope Transplant House (just a few blocks from the hospital), where she and LeRoy lived for three weeks. The lodging made it possible for her to make daily visits back and forth to the Mayo Clinic for testing and consultations to be sure everything was going well and that organ rejection was avoided.

“I can’t praise the transplant house enough,” LeRoy said, adding that through donations, patients are able to stay there for $25 per day and have use of a kitchen. If they’d had to stay in a hotel, the price tag would have been much more, he said.

One day, while watching television in the lounge at the transplant house, LeRoy started talking to a man who had the room next to theirs. He learned that the man had received his new heart and liver on the same day JoAnn received her new liver.

“I said to him, ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ and he said, ‘Yes. Your wife has my liver.’” LeRoy recalled.

After a few weeks in the transplant house, JoAnn was able to return home to Albert Lea. However, complications with the transplant have sent her back to the hospital seven times.

JoAnn acquired cytomegalovirus, or CMV, can cause recurrent blisters, shingles, chicken pox and even mononucleosis. People with weakened immune systems, like JoAnn’s, are at risk for the most serious health problems, including diarrhea, pneumonia and retinitis.

“I even have nightmares about CMV,” JoAnn admitted.

After weeks of treatment and rest, the CMV was resolved.

She’s also been troubled with failing kidney function, largely due to the anti-rejection drugs.

“I was home in bed and I was drowning,” JoAnn said. “I had 48 pounds of fluid. I said goodbye to LeRoy.

Her kidneys have now started to function again, after weeks of dialysis and medication.

JoAnn receives some rehabilitation services at HealthReach and works out at the Family Y to continue strengthening and healing. Her biggest challenges now include her diet and medications.

She said through it all, her family has always been there for her, not just when she was hospitalized, but to help clean their home and run errands. One friend, Sharon Gardner, planted a flower garden for JoAnn and tended it all summer and fall. A retired pastor came all the way to Rochester to visit when their regular pastor couldn’t.

In September, LeRoy was able to finally schedule some back surgery that he’d been putting off while JoAnn’s health problems were on the front burner. He, too, is recuperating well.

“LeRoy and I could not have gone through this ordeal without our God,” JoAnn said. “Many, many people were praying for us and still are.”

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