A Perfect Stranger
In the past, only organs from people who had died were transplanted, and only when there was a genetic match. Now, because of powerful anti-rejection drugs, people who are healthy and willing can donate organs to others who need them. Even if they are strangers to the person in need of help.
In Virginia, a man in good health has donated part of his liver to a stranger who needed it to live.
That man, Ken Schuler, and the woman whose life he saved, Deborah Parker, are both doing well. They joined CBS This Morning from affiliate WTVR-TV in Richmond, Virginia.
On March 17, Ken Schuler, who is 47, happened to be watching his local news when he heard 39-year-old Deborah Parker's father make a plea for a donor and money for a lifesaving liver transplant for his daughter.
A regular blood donor, Schuler knew right away that he had the same blood type as Parker, and that it is a rare type. Without thinking twice, he got in touch with Deborah Parker.
By March 30, he began screening tests at Virginia Commonwealth University hospital. After four days of testing and a battery of psychological tests he was told he would be an acceptable donor.
"I had blood tests and a liver biopsy where they take a piece of your liver and check it. I had angiograms to check out the blood vessels in the liver. I had MRI's and X-rays and psychological tests and they want to make sure the donor is in good health and that you know exactly what you're getting into," he says.
On April 19, Schuler became the only known healthy, living person to donate an organ to a stranger.
His surgery took 15 hours. They removed 60 percent of his liver. They took out his right lobe and, within just nine days, the left lobe grew to compensate.
That right lobe was larger than Parker's entire original liver. It is believed that she contracted hepatitis C after a blood transfusion received in 1984 during gall bladder surgery.
She had rare blood type B-positive. She feels Ken's hearing her father's plea and his coming forward was a real miracle.
Parker is now on anti-rejection medication that she must take every day, 16 pills each day. She says she feels it was God's will that she have Ken's liver to educate people about organ donation.
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