MASSARO: Liver transplant provided a second chance to live

By Gary Massaro, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published November 27, 2007 at 2:08 a.m.

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Colin Shearn's best Christmas gift probably came in May 1998.

The gift gave him a chance to live, and with it, an opportunity to enjoy the other gifts in his life, namely his wife and two children.

Shearn received a liver.

"I pretty much wake up every day and say what a great day it is," said Shearn, an immunobiologist doing cancer research at the University of Colorado School of Pharmacy. "I feel very lucky to be here."

When he was in his 20s, after getting a routine blood test at work, he found outthat he had a rare liver ailment. It revealed he had primary sclerosing cholangitis, meaning his bile ducts clogged easily and led to a lot of liver infections.

Doctors told him he might need a transplant in 10 or 15 years.

Five years after the initial diagnosis, he was on a waiting list, getting by in the meantime with tubes sticking out his side to help the ducts drain.

In April 1998, he received a transplant. But there were major problems. The liver failed, almost killing Shearn.

He was in the hospital a week. Doctors told his family to pay their respects, just in case. He moved to the top of a waiting list and got a new liver May 15, 1998.

Now, he gulps about 25 pills a day to keep his body from rejecting the liver.

But that's small stuff compared with what he had gone through - like nearly bleeding to death from the first transplant operation.

He's had a couple of other strokes of luck since.

While he was finishing his doctorate at Iowa State University, he met his wife, Alisabeth, online. She also has a Ph.D. and owns a software company.

They started writing back and forth. They met and took a walk through the Garden of the Gods.

They hit it off. They continued writing while he returned to finish his Ph.D. And then they did the meet-the-parents thing. But first he had to tell his future wife he was living with someone else's liver.

"I told him, 'Actually, I'm glad. If this hadn't happened, you wouldn't be the person you are,' " Alisabeth said.

They were married March 12, 2005. They have two children - Tucker, 2, and Brynn, 1.

Shearn said he has become more spiritual, focusing on the truly meaningful.

"Family. Friends. Faith. Things like that are more important than traffic in the morning," he said. "God put me here for a reason."

He speaks on behalf of and volunteers for Donor Alliance, which bills itself as a federally designated organ-procurement organization. He promotes being an organ and tissue donor on behalf of the 98,000 people who are waiting nationwide, 1,750 of them in Colorado and Wyoming.

Shearn said he's thankful each day that someone stepped up on his behalf.

"Many people don't get second chances," he said. "I've had two second chances."

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