It was late 1988, I was in college when I got the call, my dad was dying. My dad had been a teacher since before I was born and we didn’t have a lot of money, he worked hard to provide for us. The day school let out for the summer he would go get a summer job to help provide for the family and also help with my college expenses.
But, during the summer of 1988 the year after I graduated he took a job at a fish plant and at the time didn’t think anything of getting a hook in the finger. It hurt, but it came right out. In December of that year though my dad started to get sick and no one knew why. Then we got the news that his liver was shutting down, it turns out he had contracted Hepatitis C from that hook and now was dying.
As 1989 rolled along my dad got worse and worse and the we were now told if he was to live that he would need a liver transplant and finding one isn’t always easy, but he would be put on the list. At this point we all really were thinking 1989 was going to be the last Father’s Day with dad. It was a long year, college wasn’t easy knowing you are 150 miles away andc ouldn’t do a thing no matter where you were.
My dad slowly got worse and on December 1st we decided it looks like we were making plans for a funeral. But a couple short weeks later we got the call, they had found a liver. I jumped in my Mustang and I’m guessing made the trip fromSeattle to Portland in record time. (I was lucky not to kill myself on that trip) Upon arriving, helped the rest of the family pack their things to go to Baylor University and then drive out to my next youngest sister’s college and tell her in person that dad was being flown to Dallas.
We got the news on December 19th that the transplant seemed to have been a success, but he would still have a long recovery before he could come home. For the next couple months most of my family lived in Dallas while my dad healed and learned how to live with someon eelse’s liver in him.
He came home in May of 1990 and that Father’s Day I do have to say is one of my favorites as it was the first bonus Father’s Day. My dad never really drank, didn’t smoke, so he really didn’t have a lot of changes to do to his lifestyle and he really has become one of the poster children for how you can live a normal life after a transplant.
But, to me he is just my bestfriend and dad and I’m glad I get the chance to talk to him every day and tell him that I love him. But, I still do remember that every Father’s Day is an extra one and that because of that I also would like to thank the person that had to die to let my father live. If you aren’t an organ donor, please sign up today because the life you give may not actually stop at the recipient of the transplant, but it could also be their families.
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