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Twist of fate keeps candles burning for Ephrata man
By MARC HONDARES
Ephrata Review
Published: Jun 26, 2008 1:21 PM EST
EPHRATA - When Jeff Reifsnyder blew out the candles on his 50th birthday cake last
weekend, the Ephrata resident was reserving a special wish for the people
who helped get him here, as well as the man upstairs.
"I am very
lucky to be here," he said.
And he is very lucky, in so many
ways.
Reifsnyder celebrated his special day with his wife Sandy as
well as his parents Jack and Jean Miller, of Ephrata. The gathering at this
"drop-in" of close friends and family members was a warm one and the
blessings were many.
A few short months ago, such an event did not
seem possible. Jeff had been placed on the transplant list back in August
of 2000 after a visit to the Hospital at Penn University in Philadelphia.
By December of 2007 Jeff was in dire need of a liver transplant, and his
prospects, while improved, had not resulted in a donor.
"I wasn't in
too bad a shape at the time (he was first put on the transplant list in
August of 2000)," he said. But things had changed dramatically as the years
passed. And this past April, things began to look bleak. Having lived with
Hepatitis C as well as Cirrhosis of the liver for the last 15 years, his
body was beginning to break down.
On Mother's Day of 2006, Jeff
suffered a pancreatitis attack as a result of his failing liver. This
inflammation of the pancreatic gland happens when the enzymes that help
digest fats, proteins and carbohydrates in food become active inside the
pancreas and actually start digesting the pancreas itself.
"Over the
last two years, Jeff had been getting sicker and sicker," said wife Sandy.
"And he suffered from Ascites, which is an accumulation of fluids in the
abdomen." He was also diagnosed with Hepatorenal Syndrome. Renal failure is
common in patients with advanced chronic liver disease. "It's a combination
of, when the liver goes, the kidneys usually follow."
Jeff says his
wife was a brilliant ray of light inside the torturous storm he battled for
more than a decade. "She was great. Taking me back and forth for hospital
visits. We'd travel to Philadelphia twice a year (To Penn University). She
was always on top of everything to do with my treatments ..." The couple
has been married since 2000.
The downward spiral
The marriage
was a new beginning for Jeff, whose health problems had come about as a
result of years of drug and alcohol use.
"Jeff moved out to Colorado
after high school, and he spent several years out there. He got involved
with the wrong crowd," said mother, Jean. The wrong crowd would introduce a
carefree 18-year-old to all the wrong turns.
The former high school
athlete who starred in baseball, basketball and football according to his
father Jack would embark on a destructive path. Jeff's singular purpose
soon became getting high, by whatever means possible; getting drunk,
scoring drugs, it didn't matter.
This dark odyssey would take a
young man with his whole life in front of him and transform him into
someone whose mid-20s found him growing old before his time. Jeff realized
the course he had set out on was going to cost him his life.
His
quiet, peaceful inflection now is a sharp contrast to the war he once waged
within himself.
"That's when he accepted the Lord into his
life," Says Jean. "He became very studious in his Bible."
New
beginning
Jeff joined a church while still living in Colorado and
committed himself to a life of purpose. He joined Ephrata Grace Brethren
upon returning home in the mid-80s. Drugs and alcohol may have stolen a
part of his life, but it wasn't going to define the rest of
it.
Following his marriage vows to Sandy in 2000, he got involved in
what he calls "church planning." He had taken his Bible study quite
seriously, and he had found his place when he became a minister. The church
planning refers to the transition where certain members of a congregation
follow a new minister in service to a new church.
A new millennium,
a new marriage, a new beginning. Jeff Reifsnyder had survived his past, it
seemed. But the ghosts of his past were not content to let the story end
there.
Twist of fate
The excitement of his union was tempered
when Jeff was placed on the transplant list. The damage that had been done
to his organs made such a development a foregone conclusion.
Jean
talks about the specter cast by the realization that her son was going to
need a new liver to survive.
"I know it came as a shock to all of
us. Even though we knew, and we had known for several years that Jeff was
going to need a new liver. I don't think any of us expected what all went
into (the process) though."
The process was only going to get more
intense, and the prognosis more worrisome. Last December, Jeff spent four
days in Lancaster General. By the spring, he found himself sapped of all
energy.
"I laid around and slept most days," he said. And in April,
he was back in General, this time for eight days. That's where Jeff and
wife Sandy received the news that had been stalking them with a serpent
like promise.
"The doctors told me I needed a transplant or I wasn't
going to make it," Jeff said.
Jeff was transported from the ICU at
Lancaster General to Penn University on Friday April 25. He says things
"happened very quickly" from that point on, as the doctors began
administering one test after another. All the tests in the world were not
going to change the unspoken fact that the hours were becoming desperate,
and still there was no donor for Jeff.
"More people need livers than
get them," He says. "But then something unusual happened. My wife Sandy got
a call that a 32- year-old man had been brought in (To Penn University)
that Sunday morning, he had suffered a heart attack. He would end up
passing in the hospital, and he was a match."
The turn of events was
an unusual one, as the doctors and nurses would explain, since it is a rare
case where an organ donor passes away in the very same hospital where a
recipient awaits a match.
So when Jeff blew those candles out on his
birthday cake this past weekend, he was surrounded by the people and
prayers that had brought him back from the brink. It isn't often that a man
can celebrate his 18th birthday twice, but you have to think that is
exactly what he did. Thanks to a life that once again holds every
possibility, and a wish granted by angels.
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