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Doug Clark: Charley leaves captivity with third liver
‘Three Liver” Charley may want to change his nickname.
“Nine Lives” Charley is more like it.
I’ll be totally honest with you. I thought my next column regarding Charley Schlesinger’s second liver transplant would have to be written in past-tense.
As in…
“With his clipped, New York accent and withering wit, Schlesinger, a Spokane private investigator and longtime host of public radio’s popular ‘Jazz with Chas’ show, was a fun-loving soul who never failed to make me laugh.”
You can’t blame me for fearing the worst. All his friends did.
The call came on Feb. 7. Schlesinger rushed to Seattle and received his latest liver the following day at the University of Washington Medical Center.
The organ was an excellent match. The surgery went well.
After that things soured.
Infections and other setbacks kept Schlesinger in an intensive care unit for two straight months.
He was fed through a tube. A machine did the breathing. More surgery …
For a while, just making it through the night was all anyone could hope for him.
Schlesinger wasn’t merely knocking on death’s door. The man was halfway into the foyer.
But after a lot of dark, dark days something bright and glorious began to happen. It became apparent that Schlesinger wasn’t yet through with living.
I checked my telephone last week to hear an unmistakable rasp:
“It’s Chas calling from the other side of the void.”
It gave me goose bumps.
The hospital granted Schlesinger his first day pass on Sunday. He and Sue McClelland, the love of his life for 17 years, strolled through Woodland Park Zoo, where Schlesinger found himself relating to the captive subjects.
“Zebras, elephants, giraffes, a lion, birds, etc., all locked up,” he wrote in an e-mail to friends. “After this experience with being in the hospital, I am not so sure how I feel about that now.”
The two enjoyed lunch at the Greenlake Grill. Then they stopped at the furnished Capitol Hill apartment Sue had rented sight unseen to accommodate Schlesinger’s recovery.
“I got to take a nap on a bed that was of a practical size. I could finally stretch out and relax.”
Schlesinger is scheduled to leave the hospital Wednesday, a farewell that was expected two months ago. “I still think it is February or early March,” he told me during a telephone conversation. “Time doesn’t exist to me anymore.”
Schlesinger’s first transplant took place in 1999, his liver ravaged by hepatitis C.
Eventually, he returned to his PI work and went back on the air with the jazz radio show he has hosted (barring brief interruptions) for 34 years.
Then last year a malignant spot was detected on his new liver. Although surgery took care of it, this was a cancer with an extremely fatal track record. Schlesinger was offered the rare chance for a second transplant.
Nobody, however, expected this journey to be such a perilous one.
That Schlesinger lives is a testament to modern medicine. Modern medicine and Sue, that is.
A constant presence at his bedside, Sue also served as Schlesinger’s advocate, making tough calls about his care when needed.
“She’s a champion,” said Schlesinger.
So there’ll be no eulogy for Three Liver Charley, thank goodness. No nostalgic reminiscences about one of Spokane’s colorful characters.
Like the wacky story about the night we lost a bullet in a radio broadcasting booth.
Oh, don’t get shook. This happened years and years ago.
In fact, it was way back during those scary days when the neo-Nazis were terrorizing North Idaho with their anti-Semitism and other assorted hate.
Schlesinger, who is Jewish, was making use of the concealed weapons permit that is sometimes needed in the private investigator’s trade.
So one night he invited me to sit in on his “Jazz with Chas” show. While a record played, I cajoled him into showing me his gun. Always safety minded, Schlesinger removed the clip and slid back the top to empty the chamber.
Which ejected the unspent bullet into the air and. …
“Hey,” I said, “where’d it go?”
We searched the floor. We peered into crevices, nooks and crannies.
It was nowhere. The bullet had vanished like Jimmy Hoffa.
Then the absurdity of the situation hit me. Losing a bullet at a public radio station?
I began laughing until my sides ached.
Anyway, I’m glad I didn’t have to tell that story.
Great to have you back, Charley.