My Mom's Second Chance at Life
by Sandra Bergstrom Sharp

Linda Bergstrom, Liver Transplant Recipient November 2, 1997

It is a week after Mother’s Day and still thinking about the wonderful time I had with my mother brings tears to my eyes. There was a time when I didn’t think I would be able to spend another Mother’s Day with my mom.

She was diagnosed with Primary Biliary Cirrhosis of the liver when I was a junior in high school. After I heard this news, I was of course saddened but mostly I wondered how this came to be? Was she sick and I didn’t even know it? Why did she go in for these tests in the first place? And most of all I thought, why MY mom? She was the best mom in the world. She was always caring and supportive. Always there for me when I needed her the most. Bad things aren’t supposed to happen to people that put others in front of themselves. But I remembered a phrase that I like to repeat to myself when things don’t go my way, "God doesn’t put anything into our lives that we can’t handle." So I knew that my mom, my family and I had the strength to get through this.

I will admit that a lot of things are hazy to me. She was in and out of the hospital so many times and for so many different things that it is quite confusing to keep the dates straight. I remember when she went in to have varicose veins in her esophagus banded. Apparently, these veins are a common symptom of the disease. The waiting room was so boring, not decorated to my liking. There was nothing to look at. Shouldn’t the hospital make a waiting room with a lot of things to look at so that we can keep our minds off the real reason we are there? Instead, they give us architectural magazines that are dated two years prior to the year you are sitting there. That is what I looked at while my mom was having her veins banded. I must have looked at that thing a million times before the doctor came in and told us that she was O.K. and the procedure went O.K. THANK YOU, GOD!

I remember when she had to go down to Stanford to go through several tests to see if she was qualified for a liver transplant. "She will die without one! Of course she is qualified!"" I wanted to tell them, but she still needed the tests. And luckily she was approved to get one. Even though she was way too far down on the list. If I was in control of that list, she would have been first!

I remember when I was pregnant and my mom went into the hospital again. When I got there I told her I was the one that was supposed to be in there, not her. I prayed that my baby would get to know his grandma in the ways that I know her. God answered my prayers.

My son’s first birthday party was a few days before his actual birthday. My mom was there serving pizza and cake and guiding me through the process of a first birthday party. She looked weak though. I could tell that she felt tired and run down. She went into the hospital again a couple of days later. The day before my son’s birthday, the staff at the hospital decided that they needed to fly her to Stanford University. So on my son’s first birthday (October 28, 1997), a special plane transported my mom to California. She stayed down there where she had two long surgeries that were supposed to help her until she could get a liver. Neither one of them seemed to work for her.

On November 2, 1997, I got a call at 7:00 in the morning. It was my dad calling from Stanford. "They found a liver for your mom." He said, "She is going in pretty soon, let your sister know, I should go and check on her." I hung up the phone and immediately ran downstairs to my sister’s room. "THEY FOUND A LIVER FOR MOM!" I shouted. Our eyes poured tears of happiness. We knew that the liver may not take and we knew that her body could reject it but I also think that somewhere deep down we knew it was going to be O.K. My mom was going to live!

Later on that day, my dad called and told us that the surgery went very well and my mom was doing O.K. She had to stay at Stanford for a month before she could come home. I wasn’t able to visit her while she was down there because of work. So when she came home it was the first time in over a month I had seen her. She looked weak. She walked slowly and cautiously because of the pain but man she looked great. My mom is a beautiful woman, but I have never seen her quite so beautiful as that day. The courage showed in her eyes and it made her glow.

Today, I think my mom has more energy than I do. It has been almost four years now and she is doing so well. She and my son have a special bond. They play baseball together. She takes him to the park. They have their little inside jokes that I don’t understand and I think she is probably the best Matchbox driver in the world. God made this happen and I will be grateful to Him forever.

I can’t wait for Mother’s Day next year!