Organ donors needed to give  the gift of life Lenita Powers RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL 2/13/2002
	Elle Beebe, Liver Transplant Candidate

Ellen Beebe, of Reno, has been waiting for a new liver for five years.  

On average, 11 people die every day because they didn’t get an organ transplant in time. Ellie Beebe of Reno doesn’t want to be on that fatal list.

For the 50-year-old wife and mother of two daughters, the clock is ticking down in her race to get a liver transplant.

She was told earlier this month that her liver is failing, after being diagnosed almost 10 years ago with disease that is destroying it.

"I have about six months to live," she said Wednesday as she sat curled up on the couch of her northwest Reno home.

Beebe is among approximately 300 Nevadans and more than 80,000 people in the United States on a waiting list for a lifesaving organ transplant.

National Donor Awareness Day, a nationwide effort, is under way to make the public aware of the need for people to donate their organs, tissue and blood to save the lives of people like Beebe.

There are about 60 northern Nevadans in need of organ transplants, said Debbie Pinjuv, president of The Transplant Network in Reno.

Pinjuv said most northern Nevada transplant patients must go to hospitals in northern California.

"How sick you are is the top consideration in determining who gets a transplant," said Pinjuv, who was 36 when she was diagnosed in 1992 with the same liver disease Beebe has.

Pinjuv underwent a liver transplant in 1999, after she had been hospitalized, close to death.

Then the donation of a healthy liver sent her back into the world of the living.

"It was a miracle. Toward the end, I was conscious only about four hours a day, but as soon as I woke up from the operation, I came back to life," she said.

Pinjuv’s and Beebe’s diagnosis, primary biliary cirrhosis, a rare disease compared with more common liver ailments as hepatitis.

Primary biliary cirrhosis is a chronic liver disease that destroys the ducts that drain bile from the liver, eventually causing scarring and leading to cirrhosis. The cause is not known, but it is not the type caused by alcoholism. The disease affects women 10 times more often than men.

Pinjuv knows that Beebe is approaching the critical point.

"But in a positive vein, I have so much confidence that she will be perfect again, if we can just get her that liver," Pinjuv said.

For Beebe, it’s not a question of being able to afford the transplant operation. Her husband, Robert, works for General Electric Systems and their insurance will cover the costs.

It’s fear, not finances that have Beebe facing the fact that her daughters, Alison, 20, and Samantha, 18, could one day marry and have children without a mother in their lives.

But Beebe understands that some people are horrified at the thought of having body parts plucked from them or their loved ones to save strangers.

"They don’t understand that they’re giving the gift of life to someone, and that’s the most wonderful gift you can give."

Organ failure for those in need of a transplant is not a quick death.

Before Beebe was diagnosed with liver disease, she had been an athletic woman who had worked as a dental assistant and later as a licensed cosmetologist.

Today, she is on disability. Her skin is jaundiced and her eyes are yellow. She has trouble concentrating. Walking is an effort. Beebe’s nightmare began in 1991 with an itch on the top of her foot.

"It was the weirdest thing. I would scratch and scratch and dig deep at it, but it wouldn’t stop itching."

Now Beebe faces either death or a solution that is equally distressing — being someone in need of an organ transplant and knowing that the only way you can live is for someone else to die.

"That’s an even creepier feeling. I can’t tell you how much I cry thinking about that," Beebe said, her voice starting to break. "It’s a life for a life, and someone would have to die so I could live."