IT WAS just another day at the office. As Brian Riddle remembers it, nothing was out of the ordinary. To the staff at Dennis Young Insurance, where Brian is an agent, it definitely wasn’t just another day at the office.
“One of the girls who works there walked up to me and looked at me and said, ‘Brian, you’re back here mumbling, talking to yourself as if you’ve had a stroke.’ They literally thought I’d had a stroke. So I called my wife, Tonya, and said, ‘Tonya, you’ve got to take me somewhere,’” said Riddle.
Murfreesboro Medical Center evaluated Brian’s symptoms. It wasn’t a stroke, but the excessive amount of ammonia in his liver had gone to his brain. His liver was functioning at 10%, but until that moment, Brian believed he was fine and healthy. There was nothing serious in his prior medical history. The diagnosis was cirrhosis of the liver.
The Vanderbilt Transplant Center was his next step. He kept every appointment and followed through with every test and requirement to qualify for placement on the transplant list.
“You’ve got to be on the brink of death before you’ll get a liver because so many people are needing them,” he said. “It took me almost six months to get on this list, and I was on the transplant list for almost a year and five months.”
An image of an alcoholic often comes to mind when we hear of someone diagnosed with cirrhosis, much like we associate smoking with lung cancer. But Brian had non-alcoholic cirrhosis.
“And the very first thing they asked me was how much I drink. I told them I drink beer on the weekends if I go to the lake or the Titans game, but I am not an alcoholic. I don’t drink Monday through Friday. I never have and never will,” Brian said. “They said, ‘Well, you’re not an alcoholic, but from this point forward, you can never drink again.’”
It was a fair trade and a no-brainer, in his opinion.
Tonya’s niece, Michelle Parkin, volunteered to be a live donor and went through the barrage of tests and evaluations, like Brian.
“She went through everything that I went through. I was going to get half of her liver, and we were scheduled to do that on Sept. 10, 2022. But she came down with COVID, and they told me we would have to wait 10 weeks,” he said.
But he wouldn’t have to wait. On Sept. 22, 2022, the day following a canceled call to come for a cadaver transplant, Brian received the liver of a 50-year-old man from Chattanooga. He received health greater than before he became sick and a new perspective on life.
He said, “When I first came out, I was on about 30 pills in the morning and 25 in the evening. I was on every kind of vitamin. I’m on three anti-rejections in the morning and two in the afternoon, and I’ve got to do that for the rest of my life. But all my other medications are wonderful. I was diabetic before I went in; I’m no longer diabetic. I was on high blood pressure medicine before, and I’m not on blood pressure meds now. I could fall over tonight, but I’ve done ridiculously well. It’s crazy.”
He credits the surgeon and transplant team at Vanderbilt and the support of the community, his friends, and his family. Brian’s friend, Kim Reed, received a liver transplant about six months before him, and she and her husband, Chuck, supported him through the entire process. He leaned hardest, though, on his wife.
“You don’t realize how much you need your spouse and how important your relationship is until something like this. She walked me around the house, helped me into the car, and even onto the lawn mower. No matter how sick I got, I mowed my yard four days a week because that was the only thing I could do. I honestly don’t know what I would do if my wife had not been here to help me,” he said.
Consider being an organ donor and speak to your family about it. Remember, too, that life-threatening conditions like liver cirrhosis aren’t just a problem experienced by those who drink excessively but often a severe consequence of drinking too much.
Brian said, “I wish I could talk to kids about drinking. Something the medical team told me right after my surgery, and it blows my mind, is that they have 40-year-olds coming in with cirrhosis. We’re a society that now says drinking is okay, and kids are starting so much younger.”
We don’t realize how much we take things for granted.
“I’ve got my strength back now, and I’m doing everything I ever did before. It’s a new life, totally. [When you’re healthy], you don’t take life day by day, and you always worry about the little things. I look at that now and realize that we worry every day about stuff that really doesn’t matter. At any moment, anyone could be in the same shape I was in,” said Brian. “I’ve got a different outlook now. I feel like everybody needs to enjoy their spouse and their family and do things they’ve always wanted to do. Do it while you’re happy and healthy because the day might come when you’re not.”
“I’m definitely in favor of organ donation, but to be honest with you, before I got sick, neither my wife nor I was. This definitely opened up my eyes,” he said.
A new liver, a new life, and a new perspective – Brian Riddle is living and loving life. GN
