Did you know
• April is National Donate Life month, and the Donor Alliance is holding events across Colorado, as well as #ShowYourHeart light displays of blue and green lights.
• In 2018, Medical Center of the Rockies had 10 organ donors, which resulted in 44 lives saved, and 69 tissue donors, which resulted in 4,830 people saved or healed, according to figures from Jessie Willard, the chief nursing supervisor at the hospital, which also reported 71 eye donors in 2018.
• The American Transplant Foundation reports that there are 114,000 people in the United States on the waiting list for an organ transplant with another name added to that national list every 10 minutes.
• On average, 20 people die every day from the lack of available organs, the foundation also reports.
• One deceased donor can save up to eight lives through organ donations and heal or save 100 through tissue donation. One deceased donor can gift the heart, liver, kidneys, lungs, pancreas, small intestines, skin, veins, heart valves, tendons, ligaments, bones and corneas.
• The cornea is the most commonly transplanted tissue with more than 40,000 such transplants each year in the United States.
• A living donor may offer a kidney or part of the liver, lung, intestine or bone marrow.
Loveland resident Dennis Gibson lived to see the births of four grandchildren, to watch two of his children get married, to travel and to enjoy life because of three liver transplants.
Without them, he would not have survived.
He spoke about his surgeries, illnesses and treatments with expertise and a bit of humor, but when he stopped to think about what would have happened without the transplants, Dennis choked up with emotion and wiped away tears.
“I’m alive,” he said in a low voice. “So many other people like me have been saved by the selfless giving of others.”
That is why Dennis volunteers with the Donor Alliance and speaks about the importance of being an organ donor. He dedicates himself to spreading the word and shared his story in April, which is National Donate Life month
114,000 awaiting organs
More than 700,000 transplants have occurred in the United States since 1988, and there are about 114,000 people currently on the waiting list for a donated organ, according to information from the American Transplant Foundation.
One deceased donor alone can save eight lives, but people also can — and do — donate some organs while they are still alive. A healthy living donor can offer a kidney or a piece of their liver, lung, intestine or bone marrow to help others and still continue to live a healthy, thriving life.
Dennis has received both kinds of donations — his first was a living donation from his daughter, and his second and third were from deceased donors.
‘Never felt sick a day in my life’
Just after he married Ginny Hout in 1993, Dennis, a man in his early 40s who had “never felt sick a day in my life,” applied for life insurance. He thought the blood test was just routine and was shocked when, instead, he was deemed “uninsurable.”
He went to his doctor and learned that he had hepatitis C.
At that time, he felt healthy and there weren’t many treatment options, so he went about life as normal for the next few years. Until a weekend vacation to Tucson with his wife, where he suddenly felt — and looked — very ill.
He describes looking in the mirror and seeing his eyes appearing yellow and not having the energy to hike or golf on the trip.
Upon their return to Colorado, Dennis made an appointment at UCHealth and learned he would need a liver transplant.
Because of the hepatitis C coupled with hemachromatosis, his liver was failing, and he was placed on a transplant list. He was prepared to wait for a donor, but instead, his daughter, Lisa, then 22, stepped up as a live donor.
She went backpacking two weeks later
Livers are unique in that a person can donate a portion of their liver, and the organ will regenerate in both the donor and the recipient.
Now, about 6,000 transplants from living donors occur every year, the transplant foundation states. But back then, in 1999, live donations were still new with the first having been performed just two years earlier.
Dennis was reluctant to allow Lisa to donate, worrying more about potential ramifications for her future rather than his own life. At first, he thought of her as a backup plan, only if all else failed. But she was insistent upon donating and, after meeting with his doctor and with his wife and children, he agreed.
On May 12, 1999, Lisa donated a portion of her liver to her dad at UCHealth Transplant Center in Aurora.
She was released from the hospital six days later and went backpacking two weeks later. Since then, she married her fiancé and had her second child — milestones her father was around to enjoy because of the donation.
Dennis spent seven days in the hospital after his first transplant and healed well. But he still had the hepatitis C, which began attacking his new liver.
A second liver destroyed
Years later, his liver disease had worsened again, and he was in need of another transplant. This time, he was really sick, and a nurse at UCHealth worried he would not survive until his name was at the top of the donor list.
She encouraged him to put his name on the list at other hospitals, and he chose Piedmont in Atlanta, Georgia, where his brother lived. He flew out there to undergo tests, and while there, his condition worsened.
“I was a very sick puppy,” Dennis said.
Ultimately, he received a donated liver there on May 28, 2011.
But 24 hours after his transplant, he was back on the operating table as his surgeon removed a blood clot in his vena cava, a large vein that carries blood into the heart. He survived both surgeries.
This time, he was in the hospital two weeks with what he describes as a “rough recovery” and in Atlanta for 2 ½ months before he returned home to Colorado.
His second transplant, though, did not take as well as his first, and he fell ill every five to six weeks when bile backed up in his liver, Dennis said. He would shake and suffer from fevers ranging anywhere from 101 degrees to 105 degrees, he described; sometimes he was hospitalized.
After four years of doctors trying different fixes, Dennis was still ill. In July 2015, he fell ill on a camping trip, and ended up in the emergency room at Estes Park Medical Center. That put him on the road to his third transplant.
“I can’t go through that again.”
The doctor at the Estes Park hospital wan’t experienced with transplant recipients, and eventually sent Dennis to UCHealth via ambulance, Dennis said. In Aurora, the head of transplants at UCHealth offered a final fix — a third liver.
Dennis’ initial reaction was: “Oh, no. I almost died last time. I can’t go through that again.”
But the medical staff was able to get him moved up on the transplant list so he could have the surgery when he was healthier and better able to recover. The process took several months, and then there was a wait for a liver that would work.
His third transplant was on April 29, 2016. Though he did have a few setbacks, he has basically been healthy since.
And, after his second transplant, he was able to take a newly developed cocktail of drugs that cured his hepatitis C, so it is no longer a risk to his new liver. He is feeling good and enjoying life.
“I’m healthy as a horse again,” said Dennis, who proudly talks about his four children and six grandchildren. Four of those grandchildren were born after his first transplant. He beams at pictures of his family hanging on the wall of his home and loves talking about his wife of 26 years and the memories they built — time extended by organ donation.
Dennis added, “I’ve just been very blessed.”
Pamela Johnson: 970-699-5405, johnsonp@reporter-herald.com
