After Jamie Fiske was born with a deadly liver disease in 1982, her father enlisted University of Minnesota surgeon John Najarian to perform the risky transplant operation. Charile Fiske then needed to find a healthy liver from a donor, which was no easy task. His struggle to save Jamie helped establish the nationwide system to help transplant patients in the U.S.
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Jamie Fiske was born with a deadly liver disease in 1982. Her misfortune ended up helping everyone since needing organ transplants.
Her parents faced two giant obstacles: finding a doctor willing to perform the risky transplant operation on the baby girl and finding a donor with a healthy liver.
Surgeon John Najarian solved the first problem by agreeing to do the procedure at the University of Minnesota’s growing transplant program.
Jamie’s father, Charlie Fiske, took his daughter’s plight to media outlets, elected officials and even the White House to solve the second problem. Years later Charlie Fiske told WBUR necessity of individual appeals for organs highlighted a major failing of the otherwise promising surgery.
"It became apparent that there wasn't a national system in place--and what it did was raise the awareness of the whole situation that Congress needed to do something," Fiske said. "After congressional hearings, Ronald Reagan signed the National Transplant Act in 1984 which established a national database of donors and recipients."
Jamie Fiske remains the longest living pediatric liver transplant recipient in the nation.