Three liver transplant patients share their stories

 

Julie Moullet recalls the ride home after her liver transplant at UC Davis Medical Center in 1997.

“It had rained, and there was a rainbow. Everything looked so clean and clear. And I was so much better — even my eyesight. It was one of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen.”

Moullet’s journey had been filled with meaning on many levels. For example, in 1992, one of Moullet’s four children — her 19-year-old daughter, Down Cherie — was killed in a car accident.

“She had only had her driver’s license for three months — and I remember the day she got it,” Moullet says. “She was waiting for me to sign her little pink card to make her an organ donor. She was so insistent: ‘If something happens to me, I really want to help someone else,’” she recalls her saying.

Ironically, shortly after donating her daughter’s organs, Moullet was diagnosed with liver disease.

After she had been on a transplant list in the Bay area for four years, a friend told Moullet about the program at UC Davis. At UC Davis, she received a transplant in only two months.

“UC Davis gives such wonderful care,” she says. “I can’t remember seeing a grumpy housekeeper even.” Moullet says she now feels healthy and happy after almost 11 years post-transplant, and she has much to live for, including her three children, six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

“Life is so precious,” Moullet says. “UC Davis offers patients such wonderful care. I am left with a warm and fuzzy feeling about the whole experience. But they are also so professional with the latest in technology and care. They saved my life. I can’t help but have them up on a pedestal. After all, they gave me a second chance at life. They are all my heroes.”

Eleven years post transplant, Julie Moullet has a new lease on life.

Danny Garabedian, 54, lives and breathes for riding horses, and is back on the competition circuit for the first time in years.

“That’s what I do — that’s who I am,” says the winner of two national championships with his American quarter horse in the 1990s.

When he had a massive stroke in 2000 — and was diagnosed with diabetes and advanced liver disease — he was told by his doctors in Alaska he’d never ride again.

Characteristically, Garabedian didn’t listen.

“I decided I wasn’t going to be in that wheelchair the rest of my life,” he says.

He moved to California, where he was referred to the liver transplant program at UC Davis Medical Center.

“I went on the transplant list in February 2003, and in only a few months, I got the call,” says Garabedian, who spent three years in a wheelchair and was still unable to drive at the time. “It was 4:30, and the nurse asked if I could be there by 6 a.m. I said, ‘Yes, even if I have to ride a horse down there.’”

The eight-hour surgery changed his life.

“Before, my energy levels were so low. I could barely drag myself around — but immediately after surgery, I felt like doing things again,” he says.

What he wanted to do most was get on a horse, but John McVicar, Garabedian’s surgeon, warned he probably couldn’t ride for at least six months.

“At my three-month appointment, he asked when I thought I’d start riding again,” Garabedian says with a grin. “I said, ‘How about a month ago?’”

Indeed, he’s now back in the saddle and again competing in those rigorous equestrian events he loves so much.

For Jerry Clark, April 19, 2007, began as an ordinary day. But as he left his Folsom home to run errands, the phone rang. The voice on the other end was comforting and familiar:

“Jerry? We were wondering if you could swing by for a liver transplant today.”

The call from the UC Davis transplant coordinator capped a dizzying saga that began when Clark, 41, was diagnosed with an extremely rare form of pancreatic cancer in 2003. Surgeons successfully removed a baseball-sized tumor, but complications damaged Clark’s liver. Doctors said a transplant was his only option.

“At the time, I viewed that as a death sentence,” recalls Clark, who has a 7-year-old son. “Now I realize that transplant patients really can get their life back.”

After receiving his new liver, Clark left the hospital in record time. Fully recovered, he is engaged to be married and has started a new job as a business development executive with a Sacramento nonprofit.

He foresees a future filled with the hobbies he loves – music, travel and boating, to name a few. But most importantly, Clark says of his transplant, “my son has his father back. That just means everything to me.”

Beyond the excellent medical care, Clark commends “the amazing warmth and sincerity” of the UC Davis staff. “There is a small-town spirit and focus about them, and they really keep you optimistic during the difficult times.”