Crosby Fugate, Liver Transplant Recipient

During the summer of 2005, after multiple hospitalizations, I was diagnosed with Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis (PSC), a chronic liver disease that slowly scars the liver until it can no longer function properly. My family was told that I would eventually need a liver transplant. That time came on December 4, 2009, when I was listed for transplant. I waited five months, four of which were spent in the hospital, until I received my life-saving transplant at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital on April 9, 2010. I recovered quickly, and I am now undistinguishable from any other 17 year-old boy. My faith in God got me through the illness, and it still carries me through the tough times now.

My life was saved by a family who had lost a loved one, yet looked beyond their pain and loved someone they didn`t even know. I know from first-hand experience that there are countless people, from newborn babies to adults, who just like I was, are lying in a hospital bed perhaps in their final days. I urge those who aren`t organ and tissue donors to please be like the family that saved my life. An organ donor can save eight lives and improve many others through the gift of tissue donation. Please pass life on. I am here today because someone did just that.

-Crosby Fugate, Liver Transplant Recipient