The generosity of a U.S. Marine from Florida helped save the life of a Tamaqua woman just months ago, as he donated part of his liver to her in an Oct. 17 transplant at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

Jean Paslawsky was diagnosed with Stage 4 liver disease a year before the operation and, had the donor not been found, she would have died, doctors say.

Eternally grateful, Paslawsky posted on social media, “Share your wealth of good health! Please be an organ donor.”

In reality, Jeff Mathena of Citrus Springs helped to save two lives as his donation was coupled with another one as part of a paired exchange through UPMC’s Living Donor Liver Transplant Program.

Using the paired exchange, doctors can offer to “exchange” transplants for donors and recipients who are blood type or cross match incompatible.

In a telephone interview, Mathena said he initially wanted to be a liver donor for Barbara, the stepmother of a life-long friend since his middle school days. But when doctors learned of a blood type issue at the Presbyterian Hospital of New York, it was determined he “was not the right match.”

What followed, however, is a miraculous story of how the prospective donor went on to save Paslawsky’s life as well as his friend’s mother.

Mathena said Barbara contacted UPMC, where doctors told her she could receive plasma treatments to be “conditioned to receive part of Jeff’s liver.”

There they learned about the option for paired exchange - part of Jeff’s liver would go to Paslawsky while another donor would match with Barbara.

“I didn’t know who I was donating to, and didn’t find out until my three-month follow-up after surgery,” Mathena said, “but I wanted to help, and I knew Barbara needed a liver. After learning about paired exchange, I learned I could not only help her, but through exchanging my donation, I could help someone else too. I was in good health, so it was something I wanted to do.”

Jean’s only option

Meanwhile, Paslawsky’s friend, a retired liver transplant surgeon, had explained earlier that waiting for a liver to be donated from a deceased person was likely to not be an option to her.

She said for some reason, Paslawsky’s MELD (Mayo End-Stage Liver Disease) score, a metric used to gauge how sick a patient is, was not high enough to put her in a position to receive a liver anytime soon.

So she began telling her story to everyone, and while she got immediate responses from willing donors, “age and other factors made them ineligible to be donors,” she said, adding, “so, basically, I was told I still needed a living donor.”

Dr. Abhinav Humar, one of the surgeons of the multiple-member team at UPMC, said, “She was not at the top of the list in the waiting queue (for deceased donation), and she would not have received a liver through that option any time soon. Living donation became a more viable and realistic option if she could find a match.”

The surgeries

Dr. Humar, clinical director of the Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute and chief of UPMC Transplant Services, explained how liver transplants work.

Liver transplants replace a non-functioning liver with a new liver, similar to kidney transplants, and are done in two ways – transplant of a full liver from a deceased person, which he said is the most common transplant, or the recipient getting part of a liver of a living donor, typically a family member or friend, but even a stranger.

As for the latter procedure, he said, “It’s possible because you don’t need your entire liver. The liver is one of the few organs of the human body that actually regenerates. As the liver regenerates, it grows to full size in both the patient and donor.”

In Paslawsky’s situation, Dr. Humar said, “We had two operating rooms in use at the same time. In one operating room, a team of surgeons removed part of the donor’s (Mathena’s) liver, which takes about five hours, while in the other operating room, other surgeons and their team remove the non-functioning liver of the patient. Then the transplant takes place. The whole process takes eight to nine hours.”

Dr. Humar said the transplanted part of the liver starts to regenerate immediately, as it does in the donor. In six to eight weeks the liver grows to its full size in the donor, in time leaving both the living donor and the recipient with a fully-functioning healthy liver.

He said both Paslawsky and Mathena “are doing very well.”

Mathena’s donation, he said, was “definitely life saving.”

Recovery

In her recent post-operation visit, Paslawsky said doctors told her the liver is “growing back at the expected rate; its size is what it is anticipated to be.”

She said, “It takes about a year for the body to recover, but I feel about 10-million percent better.”

Meanwhile, Barbara “is doing really well,” Mathena said, adding, “she just had her follow-up where she was told everything has been great.”

Mathena, an infantryman his entire military career, grew up in Connecticut and was attending the University of Connecticut when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.

“I decided I wanted to join,” he said.

While he had a desire to help save lives as a Marine, he never got that opportunity as his unit was deployed while he was at Parris Island. A quick ground war followed, and his unit returned before he finished his advanced infantry training at Camp Lejeune.

But he did get to save lives another way, through donation of part of his liver.

Regarding that act of humanitarianism, he said, “I felt really good, had no worries and no questions. I definitely had no issues with it. I considered it an act of kindness. I was glad, happy I could help a couple of people.”

Back to his normal lifestyle in Florida, he said, “I feel great and the doctors said my liver has regenerated to abut 80-90 percent in size. Truthfully, I didn’t even know a liver regenerates. But I am living healthier now; lost some weight; watch my diet; and I walk 4.5 miles every morning.”

Forever grateful for his generosity, Paslawsky will always have an appreciation and admiration for the Marine.

Noting he did not get to help save lives in the war because he missed his unit’s deployment, she said, she told Mathena, “Have you thought God kept you healthy and safe to do this for me?

Look at me. You have not gone through a jungle or a desert, but you saved my life Marine, and I am here thanking you. Never forget that. Jeff, you saved my life!”