In November 2019 Lydia was diagnosed with Hepatocellular Carcinoma (HCC) and placed on the waiting list for a liver transplant. At 11:30 am on Feb. 9, 2021 Lydia's phone rang. It was Vanderbilt with the urgent message we had long waited for but were starting to fear might never come: "Get down here ASAP, because we have a liver for you."
In February 2020 Vanderbilt's Dr Banovac performed a procedure called "trans-arterial chemoembolization" or "TACE" in which he threaded a tiny tube from her femoral artery into her liver and administered a dose of chemo directly to each tumor. This kept the cancer at bay while she waited for the call.
This miracle of modern medicine took place thanks to the generosity of a person we will never know who left this life too soon at age 27. Please register as an organ donor, because you might save the lives of several people like Lydia. As of February 2021, there were 107,000+ people on the waiting list for organs, but in 2020 only 39,000 transplants were performed. Every day 17 people die waiting for an organ that never comes. You can designate your wishes on the back of your driver's licence or sign up through your state's organ donor registry. Here's a link for the national registry:
https://www.organdonor.gov/register.html 
