Last National Donate Life Month

Last National Donate Life Month

>> all month long, we celebrated the doctors, the donors and the patients touched and blessed by organ donation, in the last installment from donate life month, we will be discussioning liver transplantation, he's joined by his patient, stephanie rock, liver transplant recipient.

And thank you for joining us.

>> thank you.

>> stephanie, can you tell us a little bit about your journey?

We talked about this beforehand, the onset of your illness seemed rapid and unexpected.

>> yeah, i ended up in the hospital at the end of february.

And i hadn't been feeling well for a fairly short amount of time.

And once i got to the hospital, i realized that my kidneys were in failure, and my liver was failing and some of my organs were shutting down.

So that -- >> what was wrong?

I could probably tell you more what was wrong.

>> what were you diagnosed with?

>> with liver disease.

>> and doctors, is this something that you see come through your hospital very often?

>> well, we do for many different indications and reasons.

A lot of the country thinks that when they have sir ovals, it's from alcohol.

But it's just from one of many indications from transplants.

There are infectious causes, and morbid obesity.

And liver diseases are one of the most rapidly growing cause.

Liver failure, and when the liver fails, the other organs often follow suit.

And certainly, it's very crit.

>> and stephanie, you don't assigned like you fit into any of categories that the doctor just described.

You're a yoga instructor, so your whole persona is health and wellness, so you must have been shocked when you started feeling sick.

>> i had gone from teaching yoga a couple of days before.

And it moved so quickly, and things got so bad so fast, i went into cardiac realtime when i was in the hospital.

And i ended up getting sick last year, and it has been a long journey but g.

>> and you look wonderful.

We're so happy that you received this life saving transplant.

To find a match, doctor, can you tell us what they are, and how lucky stephanie is to have gotten a liver transplant when she got it?

>> it's a moving target.

And kernel, and about every year, it seems that the allocation of rules are changed.

And we're actually in the process of that currently where the allocation has changed.

Because there are a lot of people that need life saving argons, but there are only so many to go around.

So her liver sickness score was as high as it could be.

And she had a very good likelihood of finding a donor, versus many patients on the waiting list, they have to wait and they wait until the score shoots up.

So she had a very good chance of finding it, and it's not 100%, and we always say, we're going to try to get an organ, and if not, it can be fatal.

And she got a perfect donor right away.

>> we understand that liver transplants can be done with altruistic donors, meaning that they're living attorneys, and yours came from a deceased patient, and with this new lease on life, has there been a change in routine, and do you look at life differently.

>> i definitely do.

You see beautiful things around you everywhere you go and the grass is greener.

It's really kind of a rainbow at the end of this long journey and it's really nice, yeah.

It's good.

>> that's wonderful.

Stephanie and dr. jared, i want to thank you both for joining us.

There are organizations throughout the state that help with outreach for the nation, and