Lessons From Transplant Drive Guide Rural Fund

Gene Ross faced long odds when he was diagnosed with liver disease two years ago. His only hope: a transplant that would cost $150,000.

“Medically speaking, short of a modern miracle, there was just no way that he was going to live,” said Sandi Glorfield.

With her St. John neighbors and other Palouse residents, Glorfield helped mount a fight against tough odds of their own. They rallied to raise transplant funds with community activities like a fire department basketball game, a quilt raffle, a card party, an auction and a Garfield-to-St. John “Walk A Mile In Gene’s Shoes” walkathon.

Then Ross drew a wild card, learning from a Spokane specialist last spring that his disease - an inflammation and scarring of the bile duct and liver called cholangitis - had gone into remission.

“You know this is a miracle, don’t you?” Ross, a 63-year-old Christian Life Assembly minister, was told. “This doesn’t happen with this disease.”

The $160,000 raised on Ross’ behalf is not faring so well. While the Memphis, Tenn.-based Organ Transplant Fund will keep the money in Ross’ name should he need it later, it can never be given to his family or returned to donors.

“It would just create a lot of problems in general,” said the fund’s Donna Noelker, who handles transplant grants. “You’d open up a can of worms.”

If Ross dies without receiving the transplant, the money would go into a general transplant fund, Noelker said.

Organizers of the Ross fund drive have no hard feelings, knowing the money could only be used for a transplant for Ross once they gave it to the fund in exchange for fundraising help and financial management.

But having profited from the experience, they are now launching a Whitman County-based program of their own that will be used exclusively for area residents.

With a fund specifically designated for the county, organizers said they hope residents will be even more open to making donations.

“We learned from that,” said Greg Partch, a Garfield City Council member and director of the Whitman County Organ Transplant Fund. “We said we can do this just as easily ourselves.”

Helping others is something of a growth industry for the Palouse’s small towns, particularly for St. John and its 500 or so residents.

In 1992, there was a campaign to help Luther Nichols, a 2-year-old in need of a liver transplant. Then came the fund-raiser for Ross in early 1994, followed by yet another liver transplant campaign for Robbie Ledbetter, the 6-month-old grandson of a LaCrosse woman.

Recently, residents have been working to help Julie Heitstuman, who lost six months of work while undergoing treatment for bone marrow cancer.

While health insurance often covers direct medical costs, an outside source of funding like the organ fund “is very vital” to help families saddled with the expenses of transportation, medication and lodging for relatives near the hospital, said Ed Huppman, director of organ procurement at Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane.

The Whitman County fund, which is still going through the motions of getting its nonprofit status, would be administered by a volunteer board, reducing overhead expenses to nearly nothing, said Sandi Glorfield, its president. .

The organization will also act as a network for potential transplant candidates and recipients. A crisis line has already been set up at 648-3625.

“When this happens to someone in our county, they’re not lost,” said Greg Partch. “We immediately put them in contact with someone who’s been through it.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo