Steve received his liver transplant in the spring of 2016. In October of 2017, Steve ran the Marine Corps Marathon while “Team Steve” set up a booth alongside the route to sign people up to become organ donors.

Watch Steve’s liver transplant recovery story.

Transcript
Steve Nugent: I was 38, and I was going to get some life insurance, because we were expecting another baby. And when I went to get the insurance, they did some blood work on me. And it came back, and the guy said, I'm not going to give you life insurance. And I suggest you go to a doctor immediately, because there's something wrong with your liver. And so sure enough, he came in the room and said, hey, I hate to tell you this, but you're really unlucky. There's a good chance in the next four or five years you're going to need a transplant.

Diane Nugent: He was miserable. He was just miserable.

Steve Nugent: When the bile backs up into your liver, and it's not getting out, what happens is that bile gets into your bloodstream. And so you get the worst itching you could ever imagine, 10 times worse than poison ivy or anything like that, and it's everywhere. You're just really super tired. So I'd go from feeling OK to a blockage and then all this itching would come in. And my eyes would go yellow. My skin would go yellow. And you get very confused what's happening.

Daniel Maluf, MD: So when we met Steve, he came for a second opinion type. And he already has a liver transplant, so he has the experience in liver transplant. And he was in a stage of his liver disease. Post-transplant, he was malnourished. He was debilitated, and he was in jaundiced, meaning he was a little bit yellow in the skin. So he looked kind of deteriorated when we met him.

Steve Nugent: I was laying in bed. It was hard for me to get out anymore. She said, what do you want? I don't want to leave you guys, but I can't do this anymore. And she said, give me two more weeks.

Cynthia Williams, RN: He didn't have a choice. The liver he had received in his first transplant had shut down. It was causing kidney problems, digestion problems. His only option was to be re-transplanted.

Diane Nugent: Sometime in May is when we had our evaluation, and we were transplanted 31 days later.

Steve Nugent: Well, my first memory of waking up was this big hot blanket on me and somebody going, I'm giving you a bear hug. But I quickly knew that, hey, what I was waiting for had happened. And right now, I'm alive.

Diane Nugent: When they took the tube out, and he literally looked at me, and he's like, I'm running the Marine Corps Marathon. I go, I know you are. But let's just focus on getting through this right now. He's like, no, I'm going to just make sure a transplant's OK with it, but I really want to do this.

Cynthia Williams, RN: It just attests to his total passion for accomplishing things.

Steve Nugent: When you're sick, and you're just trying to hold on, you lose all hope, and you lose all dreams. UVA gave me hope because they said, I'll find you an organ.

Daniel Maluf, MD: When I learned that Steve was running this marathon, I couldn't believe it, because he run it a few months after the transplant. So I was very impressed by the degree of recovery that Steve achieved.

Steve Nugent: Cindy, if there's a more positive person in the world, I'd like to meet her, because Cindy is all about-- it's going to work. It's going to go.

Diane Nugent: They were there. They comforted you. They gave you support. They gave you strength. They just made you feel like you were in a place where they truly, truly cared. And they do.

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