It’s not every day that a student at UWMC gets a liver transplant. For his entire life, Darin James Weiks, known by family and friends as Doogie, had been fighting a disease called Glycogen Storage Disease Type 1A, characterized by a missing enzyme in the liver needed to break down sugar. As a result, all the sugar he consumed was stored in the liver, which in turn caused the liver to enlarge.
His condition affected his life in many ways, but Doogie has received a lot of support from friends and family, especially in his hometown of Athens, WI. Doogie attended high school there, and even though he always wanted to join the football team, his disease prevented him from doing so. His doctors would not allow him to play because contact sports were especially dangerous for him; if he took a blow to the liver, it could be fatal. The last game of the 2008 season, Doogie’s senior year in Athens, some of the members of the high school football team came up with a way to fulfill Doogie’s dream despite his illness. Making an agreement with the Abbotsford team, they made it possible for him to get on the field and play as the team’s kicker—an experience he will never forget. The story of the game is featured on the ESPN website along with a video of the television broadcast. You can find it all at sports.espn.go.com/highschool/rise/ football.
In October of 2008, Doogie developed potentially cancerous tumors on his liver requiring him to have a liver transplant. Recently receiving a call that a liver was available for him on Oct 28, Doogie went in for surgery the following Thursday at 11:00 a.m. at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. He is currently in recovery from this procedure, and all has gone well so far.
As a writer for The Forum, I was granted the opportunity to contact Doogie via Facebook messaging while he was in Rochester, and he graciously took the time to answer a few of my questions.
Forum: Has it been difficult living with this condition? What sort of things did you have to do to regulate it?
Doogie Weiks: It hasn’t been too difficult because I didn’t know any different. Every day I had to take cornstarch and Kool-aid mixtures to regulate blood sugar. At night I had to be hooked up to a pump that would constantly be feeding me through a gastrostomy tube I had in my stomach.
F: How did you feel when you got the call that they had a liver for you and you could receive the transplant?
Weiks: I was excited when my transplant coordinator called. I had been waiting for this for almost a year. I wasn’t too nervous because I knew it would go well because of the care I was already getting at Mayo Clinic.
F: Have you had a lot of support from family and friends? How has that support helped you?
Weiks: I have had awesome support from family and friends. I had a little extra motivation to get through the surgery without problems because I knew I had so many people out there pulling for me.
F: Is there anything else you would like the readers of the Forum, or any of the students at the UWMC, to know? Is there anything you would like to say to them?
Weiks: I guess I would like to encourage you, if you’re not already, to become an organ donor. By being an organ donor you can save more than 60 lives. It’s almost like giving the gift of life to someone who needs a second chance.
Doogie is currently a freshman at UWMC and isn’t expected back at school until next semester at the earliest. He has greatly appreciated all the support from family, friends, and students and faculty associated with the UWMC campus, and would definitely also appreciate your thoughts and continued support as he begins a life with his new, healthy liver.
Darin James Weiks was very lucky to get a Liver transplant. At least 9,000 of the 105,000 Americans on the national waiting list will die before they get a transplant. Most of these deaths are needless. Americans bury or cremate 20,000 transplantable organs every year.
There is a simple way to put a big dent in the organ shortage – give donated organs first to people who have agreed to donate their own organs when they die.
Giving organs first to organ donors will convince more people to register as organ donors. It will also make the organ allocation system fairer. People who aren’t prepared to share the gift of life should go to the back of the transplant waiting list as long as there is a shortage of organs.
Anyone who wants to donate their organs to others who have agreed to donate theirs can join LifeSharers. LifeSharers is a non-profit network of organ donors who agree to offer their organs first to other organ donors when they die. Membership is free at http://www.lifesharers.org or by calling 1-888-ORGAN88. There is no age limit, parents can enroll their minor children, and no one is excluded due to any pre-existing medical condition. LifeSharers has over 13,000 members, including 223 members in Wisconsin.
Please contact me – Dave Undis, Executive Director of LifeSharers – if your readers would like to learn more about our innovative approach to increasing the number of organ donors. I can arrange interviews with some of our local members if you’re interested. My email address is daveundis@lifesharers.org. My phone number is 615-351-8622.
The semester just ended at UWMC, but I have signed up to stay on the Forum staff next semester. However, even though we will not be doing another issue until early February, this definitely sounds like a good idea for another article. Thank you for your comment, and I’d just like you to know that I do agree with you…giving organs first to organ donors, those who have agreed to do the same for others,does seem more fair to me. Again, thank you for your thoughts, it’s appreciated.