Why I Miss Bill Clinton (and other thoughts):

I woke up this morning to a front-page story in the Strib about two co-workers in the U's School of Social Work, my academic home. I was oblivious to this pending event (I'm not around Peters Hall much these days) and I'm awestruck. This is one of those, "I wonder what I would do in this situation" stories. I'm acquainted with both Peter and Peggy and I certainly wish them well!!!

Rare employee benefit: Gift of life

A liver transplant patient finds an unexpected donor: a co-worker at the University of Minnesota.

By Mary Jane Smetanka, Star Tribune

Last update: June 12, 2007 – 11:31 PM
Peter Dimock feels perfectly healthy. He bikes 30, 40, even 50 miles in a day. He's a dancer. When he found out he had liver cancer and his best chance of surviving was a liver transplant, he realized it was unlikely he'd find a donor.

There are few donors and nationwide; more than 17,000 people are on the waiting list. The sickest are first in line. Organs usually come from cadavers or family members.

But Dimock didn't have to look any further for his new liver than Peters Hall at the University of Minnesota, where he is a teaching specialist in the School of Social Work. Today, co-worker Peggy Pond will give him 60 percent of her liver. Because livers can regenerate, if all goes well, in about three months both will have nearly full-size, healthy livers.

Last week, the two were joking about the conversations they'll have later this summer when they run into each other at work.

"She's going to say, 'Hey, are you taking care of my liver?' and I'm going to tell her that she's given up all the rights to it," Dimock said.

Nationwide, there have been more than 2,200 adult-to-adult live liver transplants. Seventy of those operations have been performed at the U. According to a national transplant database, 15 of the operations at the U involved donors who were unrelated by blood or marriage to the recipient.

"I can tell you stories that will make you weep in the case of donors coming forward," said Dr. Abhi Humar, director of the U's Living Donor Transplant Program and the surgeon who will operate on Pond today. "You'd be surprised at the goodness in people."

A deadly virus

Dimock, 62, worked as a social worker and counselor at county and mental health agencies in the Twin Cities before joining the U about eight years ago. Over the years, doctors had noticed his abnormal liver enzyme levels and told him to stop drinking. "I told them I wasn't," he said.

In the 1990s, when a blood test was developed for hepatitis C, Dimock learned he was carrying the virus. He suspects he contracted it during his service in Vietnam. He had interferon treatments to kill the virus and visited the doctor every six months.

Last November, during one of those routine visits, a cancer was found on his liver. His wife of 22 years, Vicki, couldn't believe it.

"I was just at the point of really believing the virus was gone," she said. "I could feel myself relaxing and it looked like long-term, things were optimistic ... . It was really shocking and pretty traumatic."

Dimock's tumor was removed. But in people with hepatitis C, the chance of recurrence is high and the cancer is often fatal. Because of his longstanding hepatitis, Dimock also had cirrhosis. One doctor recommended that he have part of his liver removed, while others suggested a liver transplant.

Dimock wanted a transplant. But because he was outwardly healthy, he knew he'd be low on the transplant list. His wife wasn't a match, and he didn't want to involve his son, who will enter college this fall. Struggling with how to tell co-workers what was going on, he wrote a letter.

Dimock was at a doctor's appointment when the school's director read his letter to stunned colleagues at a December staff meeting. Among them was Pond, who thought, I could do that.

The same day, she rapped on Dimock's office door.

"I'd consider it," she told him. Her blood type, A, was compatible, meeting a big requirement for donation.

Pond went home and talked to her husband, St. Paul Humboldt High School Principal Mike Sodomka. He wanted to know if it would affect her life span.

"Well, if you die it does," she told him.

Giving life

If Dimock is the pleasant, do-it-all guy in the School of Social Work -- he's worked on everything from complicated technology projects to continuing education -- Pond is the "good soul" of a school known for its warmth and camaraderie, a co-worker said. An undergraduate community program assistant, she used to bring pies for birthdays. She heads the group that buys get-well cards for co-workers.

Together, Dimock and Pond had started a meditation group that met over lunch hour. But they weren't close. Dimock was gratified but a bit worried when Pond plunged forward to investigate the possibility of donation.

"This is a very big decision," he said.

Over the weeks, Pond, 42, met with a kidney specialist, transplant coordinator, other doctors and a social worker who probed her reasons for wanting to donate. One motivation, Pond said, is that she and her husband can't have children.

"I view this as a way to give life to someone," she said.

While the U has a perfect record with adult live donation of livers, the operation isn't risk-free. Nationwide, two donors have died. Humar said at the U, liver donors have minor complications 5 to 8 percent of the time. Less than 2 percent have major complications that require being re-admitted to the hospital.

Pond's surgery would last five to six hours. Most of her liver would be removed for Dimock. She would be in the hospital for about a week, and couldn't return to work for four to six weeks.

Pond took a week in April to think about what to do. She talked with liver donors, her husband and her minister. She thought about her mortality.

"I just kept going back that it felt like the right thing to do," Pond said. "I'm in a great relationship, I'm healthy, I'm in a great stage of my life."

She was "gung ho" when she came back to the U, but Dimock was wary, aware of the gravity of her decision. "I didn't want to influence her," he said.

"He kept telling me anytime I wanted to back out, it was fine," Pond said.

But Pond came to him and told him she wanted to go ahead.

His reaction: "Oh my God, it's really going to happen."

Puzzles and ear plugs

Last Thursday, 50 people from the school and one golden retriever attended a lunchtime send-off for Dimock and Pond in the Peters Hall basement. The frosting on the cake said, "Live and Let Liver." Two big baskets were jammed with gifts: puzzles, Solitaire and Sudoku games, magazines, Silly Putty, ear plugs.

Pond and Dimock answered questions with banter worthy of a stand-up routine. What would happen to Dimock's liver? "Maybe they'll serve it to me later," he said with a grin as everyone laughed and someone groaned, "Oh, Peter." When someone asked what the two needed to help grow their livers back to full size, Dimock said "Bacon." And when Pond said every liver donor she'd talked to had said they'd do it again, Dimock said, "Funny, but all the transplant recipients said, 'No!' "

The two said they would spend the days before the transplant hanging out with family, cleaning out gardens. Dimock and his wife would test their ballroom dancing skills in competition.

Dimock talked about how strange it was to feel fine and yet know that he needed a new liver. His eyes filled with tears and his voice grew husky as he spoke of his gratitude to Pond, and others in the room began to weep silently.

"One thing I'm learning is how many people care," he said. "It doesn't really hit until something like this happens, and everyone comes out of the woodwork ... . I've never felt so cared about in my life. It makes it so much easier to go into the surgery. It just can't not go well.

"After we go through all this, the next party, I throw!"