By writer to www.sfchronicle.com
Eric Steger is operating out of physique components to donate.
He’s already donated a few of his bone marrow and half his liver. He’s donated blood and blood plasma greater than 130 instances — precisely what number of he’s misplaced depend.
Not way back he flew midway world wide to provide away a kidney to a stranger in Tel Aviv. On the final minute, the transplant surgeons stated the kidney donation wouldn’t work and Steger acquired to maintain his kidney inside his physique, which is the place most individuals apart from Steger select to maintain their inside organs.
“What I’m doing is a mitzvah,” he stated, utilizing the Hebrew phrase for the sort of noble act that persons are alleged to do however often don’t. “If I can maintain somebody alive, that’s value doing.”
Steger, a 50-year-old faculty math tutor from Sunnyvale who often is the most prolific donor within the Bay Space, is resting up as of late from the liver donation, his newest. Earlier this month, he flew to Pittsburgh and lay on an working desk for six hours whereas surgeons extracted a lot of that organ and caught it contained in the physique of a really grateful 53-year-old man within the subsequent working room.
Whereas he recuperates from that, Steger is taking a number of weeks off from work and occurring lengthy walks round Sunnyvale along with his half a liver. The organ is anticipated to regrow slowly to its regular dimension if Steger behaves sensibly, follows his physician’s orders and lays off the intoxicating fluids which might be the standard foe of the human liver.
So this week, he strolled 7 miles to a bowling alley and had a ginger ale.
Steger, who performs event chess when he’s not hanging round hospitals, acquired into the donating behavior three a long time in the past, after a highschool science trainer supplied further credit score to any scholar who gave a pint of blood.
Additional credit score from a trainer, or different private profit, isn’t the fitting purpose to be a donor, Steger quickly concluded. After that, he by no means accepted something for donations. Steger is taking part in for greater stakes.
“I don’t like funerals, even funerals of individuals I don’t know,” he stated. “What I’m doing is retaining somebody from passing earlier than his time. It doesn’t matter who it’s.”
He did obtain a airplane journey to Pittsburgh to make the liver donation, but it surely was a center seat in coach.
“No good deed goes unpunished,” stated Steger, a slender man with a large smile and a humorousness that turns out to be useful in locations like hospitals.
Steger turned pals with the stranger who acquired his liver, a Des Moines rabbi named Jeffrey Kurtz-Lendner. They met within the hospital a few days after the partial liver modified palms. Docs stated Kurtz-Lendner had been days away from dying.
“He’s given me my life,” Kurtz-Lendner stated in a video recorded by the rabbi’s spouse in his hospital room, with Steger by his facet, “and he’s given my youngsters their smiles again.”
As for his bone marrow, donated in 2007, Steger doesn’t know who ended up with that. Steger wrote a notice to the bone marrow docs, and so they agreed to cross it alongside to the recipient, who replied three years after the process with a half-page “Pricey Sir” letter addressed to Steger.
“Due to you, I acquired again to a traditional life,” the nameless letter stated. “I need you to know I really feel properly.”
That’s ok for Steger. He retains the notice in his desk drawer and appears at it every so often whereas he considers what a part of him to half with subsequent.
He’d nonetheless like to provide somebody a kidney, since he has two of them, however that gained’t be allowed below the foundations till Steger is ready to wean himself from one in all his hypertension medicines.
He wouldn’t thoughts giving one in all his lungs, however that’s even more durable to do as a result of lungs are finicky about whom they go to. Steger stated his brother in San Carlos could be the probably individual to get one in all his lungs ought to his brother ever want one which, happily for him, he doesn’t.
In line with the U.S. Division of Well being and Human Providers, 40,000 organ transplants have been carried out final 12 months, with about 80% coming from cadavers. Some 113,000 sufferers are on ready lists, hoping to get one. Kidneys are probably the most requested organ, by about 9 to 1.
Serial donors like Steger are “fairly uncommon,” stated Anne Paschke, a spokeswoman for the Organ Procurement and Transplant Community, which coordinates organ donations. A wholesome donor can provide a couple of organ, she stated, though it takes an “terribly selfless” individual to do it.
As for the remainder of his physique, Steger awaits the day of reckoning that comes for all, donors and nondonors alike. Taking no probabilities, he carries in his pockets each a pink “donor” dot on his driver’s license and a separate inexperienced physique donation authorization card. With a bit of luck, whoever rummages by his pockets will discover one or the opposite. At that time, coronary heart, pancreas, liver, kidneys, pores and skin, corneas and the rest will probably be up for grabs.
“I gained’t be needing them,” Steger stated.
In the meantime, as a part of his recuperation, Steger walked over to the personnel workplace at Foothill Faculty and discovered that reimbursement for his day without work work for the liver donation would come out of his private sick time. Which means his liver isn’t all he donated.
“That’s all proper,” Steger stated. “I’ve at all times had an altruistic streak.”
Steve Rubenstein is a San Francisco Chronicle employees author. E-mail: srubenstein@sfchronicle.com
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