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| SUMMIT PHOTO BY BOB FENSKE
Craig Johnson listens to Waldorf football coach Greg Youngblood talk to his players following the Warriors’ homecoming football game Saturday at Bolstorff Field. |
Transplant tale
An amazing convergence of ‘God things' lead to life-changing transplant
By Bob Fenske
Of The Summit
This isn't a story about Craig Johnson, although to be honest, the Forest City man figures prominently in this tale.
After all, he is the one who received a life-giving liver transplant in February and he is the one who, despite his dislike of speaking in front of crowds, is telling his story, as he did this past Saturday night during Waldorf College's annual Homecoming Alumni Banquet.
This is more of a story about faith, family and friends, a beautiful trifecta that has made for an inspiring journey. In the end, though, this is a story about “God things” that melded together to make for an epic story, one Craig Johnson hopes inspires all of us to embrace the life-giving gift that is organ donation.
“You know me,” he said with a wry smile, “I'm really not a big talker, but this is one way I can say thank you, one way I can let people know how they can transform lives.”
THE TALE BEGINS in 1999, when Craig Johnson was diagnosed with Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis. Or as Johnson says with a laugh, “PSC works a lot better.”
The disease primarily affects the bile ducts, which become inflamed. Because bile cannot drain properly through the ducts, it accumulates in the liver causing damage to liver cells. Eventually, so much bile is accumulated, it seeps into the bloodstream.
PSC patients are constantly fatigued and their skin color yellows as the bile accumulates.
For years, Johnson returned to Rochester, Minn., for what he jokingly calls “cleanups,” but over time - just as the doctors told him in 1999 - the time between trips to Rochester became less and less and the effectiveness of treatments dwindled.
“They told me then that I would eventually have to have a liver transplant,” he said, “and they were right.”
In July 2007, Johnson was put on the transplant list, and every week, he had his blood drawn and his MELD score recorded. The higher the score, the higher he went up on the list.
Still, being on the list was no guarantee that Johnson would receive a liver. Seventeen people die every day waiting for a transplant.
DAWN JOHNSON, CRAIG'S wife, has a classic Type-A personality, and the Waldorf College business instructor struggled to help her husband last winter.
“There was nothing more frustrating than to realize that all we could do is wait,” she said. “I wanted to do something, anything really, to help him feel better.”
But the fatigue grabbed a hold and never let go. Johnson continued to work at Titonka Savings Bank, where he is a vice president and loan officer, but by the time the workday ended, he was exhausted.
Yet, save for his skin color, few of his coworkers, customers or friends realized how sick Johnson really was.
“That may be the most amazing thing about all of this,” said TSB employee Jan Anderson, who has worked with Johnson for 11 years. “He always had a great attitude, he never seemed to get down. He still joked with us just the way he did when we first started working together.”
JEREMIAH DOSSER WAS nine days shy of his 25th birthday when the former Waldorf student was killed in a tragic motorcycle accident on March 22, 2007.
Dosser was an organ donor, and doctors were able to use his corneas and other tissues for transplants. But because he wasn't registered online, his heart was not saved in time to be used for someone in need.
His mother, Jody Dosser, was the Waldorf College volleyball coach at the time, and she became an outspoken advocate for organ, eye and tissue donation. In September, six months after the death of her son, Dosser and her volleyball team held a “Donor Night” in an effort to spread the word that having that little box on a driver's license isn't enough when it comes to organ donation.
On that same night, they also talked about how people could designate their organs to specific people, and Waldorf College Vice President of Academic Affairs Dan Hanson was in the crowd.
FIVE MONTHS LATER, Clear Lake resident Janis Ball suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage, and doctors told her children - among them Wendy Smith, the wife of Waldorf Religion Professor Steve Smith - that there was little they could do for their mother.
“There was hope but very little of it,” Steve Smith said, “and they told us we really needed to start thinking about things like organ donation if we were going to do it.”
Janis Ball's condition worsened over the next day, and she was declared brain dead. On Tuesday, Feb. 19, she suffered a heart attack, but family members asked doctors to do what they could to resuscitate her so that her organs and tissues could be harvested.
“I knew about Craig's condition, but honestly, I didn't know the possibilities were there,” Smith said. “Wendy and I wanted to support Craig and Dawn as much as we could, but we just didn't know that we could do something.”
NO ONE KNEW - not Craig or Dawn Johnson or Dan Hanson or Steve and Wendy Smith - how incredible Feb. 21, 2008, was going to be when they awoke that morning.
Dan Hanson stopped by Steve Smith's office to offer his condolences. As they talked, he asked Smith if he knew the family could designate an organ to go to a specific person?
“And that started this just amazing, wonderful process,” Smith said.
The next few hours were just a whirlwind of activity. Steve called Wendy to see if it would be OK to designate her mother's liver for Craig. He called the “harvest team” at the hospital and told them the family wanted that liver, if at all possible, to go to Craig. He told Dawn about their family's decision.
But everyone knew the chances were remote. Did Janis Ball have the right blood type? Was the liver the right size? Was it healthy enough?
Sometime during the morning, the hospital called Steve Smith and said they couldn't find Craig's name on the Iowa donor list. He went to the classroom where Dawn was teaching, pulled her out of class and found out that the name could be found on the Mayo Clinic transplant list.
“Even though we had been told the chances were slim - remote really - that it would match,” Smith said as he fought back tears, “I prayed for divine intervention. To know what Craig had gone through, to know that my mother-in-law's death could help another live ... it was a powerful morning.”
THE CALL CAME at 11:58.01, but Craig Johnson thought nothing of it. He had given blood two days before, and Rochester always called right around noon on Thursdays to tell him the results.
“With the caller ID and everything, everyone was talking, getting excited,” he said as he sat in the same office where he had taken that call on Feb. 21. “I just figured it was the MELD score and nothing more.”
But when he picked up the receiver, a different voice was on the line.
“We have a liver for you, would you like it?”
The answer was obvious. Craig hung up the phone, dialed his wife's number at Waldorf and told her the news.
“She told me, ‘Craig, it's been an emotional day. I'm not in the mood for jokes,'” Craig said. “We kept going around and around about it, and finally, I told her that I was leaving in 45 minutes and she could come with me or without me.”
Meanwhile, the bank was buzzing. More than seven months later, Johnson still laughs at the scene that unfolded at TSB.
Everyone it seemed was frantic, everyone, that is, but Craig Johnson.
“He called me and said he needed to go over a few things before he left,” Anderson said with a laugh. “I'm like, ‘What are you thinking? You need to get out of here.' But he was Craig right up to the end.”
GETTING THE CALL and getting a liver are not always the same, as the Johnsons well knew from all the “training” they had taken after Craig was put on the transplant list.
The blood type and liver size can be perfect, but other complications can stop a transplant from taking place.
But at 10:45 p.m. that night, Craig was taken into surgery. As the 21st turned into the 22nd, Janis Ball's liver was placed into Craig Johnson's body.
A long recovery - one that in some ways will continue for the rest of his life - began.
Craig Johnson has countless humorous stories to tell about his 40-day stay in Rochester, but one of the best shows just how fast that recovery began.
On the morning of his surgery, he awoke with both his wife and a nurse in his room.
“My wife being a slight Type-A personality and the nurse being a full-blown Type A, I knew I was in trouble,” he said with a laugh. “I couldn't talk with all the tubes ... so I finally grabbed a white board, drew a box, wrote ESPN and an arrow to the TV ... they finally got the message.”
Meanwhile, back in Iowa, Steve and Wendy Smith prepared for Janis Ball's funeral that Steve would conduct on the following Sunday. But Steve had a plan: If he could get everything prepared, he wanted to go see Craig Johnson on Saturday.
“We walked off the elevator and there was Dawn sitting on the floor talking on her cell phone. When she saw us, she said, ‘I've got to go,' hung up and just hugged us.”
As he told the story, his voice cracked with emotion and the tears welled up in Steve Smith's eyes.
“And then we went in to see him, and it was just amazing. He looked so good. ... God had a plan and we were there, right there, to see the results of it.”
DAWN JOHNSON JOKES that she shouldn't have been surprised that her husband had a host of “rejection” issues when it came to his new liver.
“You know him, he can be kind of stubborn,” she said with a laugh.
But with a few fits and stops thrown in, Craig Johnson recovered. The yellow pallor that had been so much of his life in recent years fast receded.
The 40 days in Rochester were spent in Methodist Hospital and the “transplant house,” but the Johnsons remained connected to home - through a Caring Bridge website that Dawn faithfully updated and by countless family members and friends.
Their two sons - Andrew, who was a sophomore at Waldorf, and Alex, who was a sophomore at Forest City High School - remained at home, but “we had so many people looking in on them, they must have known it was me who set all that up,” Dawn said. “But, they too, were so prepared and handled it so well.”
On March 31, Craig Johnson was sent home, but the memories - no, make that the people - of those 40 days will never leave him.
“The care and the support and all of that ... I can't describe it,” he said.
The mischievous smile that all of Craig Johnson's friends know so well blossomed. “Can you imagine putting up with me for 40 days?”
THOSE WHO KNOW Craig Johnson know he is not one to talk about himself or stand out in the crowd; but three times in the last month, he has shared his story, and with perfect strangers at that.
Saturday night, he stood in the Waldorf College Atrium, and his voice cracked several times. It is an emotional story - an epic tale with enough subplots to put a television mini-series to shame.
Some might say an amazing set of coincidences led to this transplant; after all, if Jeremiah Dosser hadn't died and his family hadn't learned so much about organ donation, Feb. 21 would have never happened.
If Dan Hanson hadn't gone to that volleyball game last year, Feb. 21 wouldn't have happened.
If Janis Ball hadn't had a heart attack, which slowed her “organ harvest” timeline for her, Feb. 21 would have never happened.
If Hanson hadn't connected with Steve Smith on that fateful morning, Feb. 21 would have never happened. The list can go on and on.
Steve Smith is an ordained minister, and he doesn't buy that it was an amazing series of coincidences.
“It was God. How can it not be?”
On a gorgeous hand-of-God fall morning recently, Craig Johnson sat in his office at TSB and shared his story.
“It's about faith, family and friends,” he said. “When you get right down to it, that is what is important.”
He smiled, and the whites of his eyes shone brightly.
Story created Oct 07, 2008 - 14:41:35 CDT.
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