In the Spring of 2004 I almost bled to death on the floor of my bathroom.  That was my first clue that something serious was wrong.  Unknown to me, I had developed autoimmune hepatitis.  No real symptoms appeared until a verisee burst in my esophageal vein.  I thought I had an upset stomach.   But a stomach full of blood will do that to you.

Some very skilled doctors saved my life.  And thus began a great adventure that led us from Columbia, SC to Cherry Hill, NJ and to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.  They placed me low on the Penn transplant list.  Just in case, they said.  But they knew what was coming.  I did not.

You get used to a damaged liver and don’t think much about it.  I had important things to do.  In September 2011 my doctor sent me for a CAT Scan.  Routine, he said.  But it wasn’t.  They spotted a tumor on my damaged liver. 

The next move was chemo embolization, in which doctors block off the blood supply to the malignant area.  It doesn’t cure.  It buys time.  And it worked.   Another scan a few months later revealed the tumor had disappeared.  In the meantime they began moving me up on the regional transplant list.

Now here’s where it gets interesting.  A transplant requires a compatible donor, and donors only become available because of someone else’s catastrophe.  I got three calls to come to the hospital.  Three times they decided no-go.

I talked to God extensively about this.  One prayer was, “God, please provide a donor liver if it is your will for me that I should go on living.”  You can trust him with your life, but you never know what he will do.  A second prayer was, “God, it would be really helpful if this might happen so I can recover during the Summer when work is slower.”  A third prayer was, “Lord, I’ve promised to perform a wedding for a young couple, and I don’t want to spoil their day by suddenly not being there.”   You see, God cares about little things and I felt free to ask him.

I went to Rehobeth Beach for the wedding on May 12.  We got  back to our hotel room at midnight after the reception.   At 3:45 AM Penn called.  “Come now!”  We arrived in Philadelphia at 7:00 and by noon I was in surgery.  It was in God’s hands now.  And the surgeon’s.

About 1:00 the surgeon found Barb and said, “We have discovered a lesion on the donor’s kidney.  We don’t know if it is malignant.  Do you want to go ahead?”  Barb asked, “Can I call my sons?  They are on their way from Washington, DC.”  In the meantime she was praying silently for wisdom.

The call caught our sons who were traveling in two cars, but had at that moment pulled into an Interstate rest area.  They were standing together outside when the doctor called.  Thirty seconds later only one would have been able to talk.  They said, “Go for it!” 

The day following the surgery, May 14, I had been scheduled for another CAT Scan.  It would have shown that the cancerous tumors had exploded in my liver.   Perhaps a month after surgery an oncologist at Penn told me, “You know, if we had realized how bad your liver was, we would not have done the transplant.  Many times when the cancer is that advanced, since the immune system  is shut down to prevent rejection,  the patient never leaves the hospital.  Right now you’ve got a fifty-fifty chance that the cancer has not gotten loose.”  Obviously it hasn’t.

So God timed our move to New Jersey.  He placed me with the right medical team.  He worked it so I could perform a wedding important to someone else.  He split-second connected a phone call.  And he waited until the last possible moment for the transplant to be done.  In the Bible it says, “He preserves the way of his godly ones.” (Proverbs 2:8) He does.

How do I feel?  Awed, and very thankful, and after a year, physically terrific. 

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Dr. Rick Perrin is Chairman of the Board of WRF and senior pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church in Cherry Hill NJ.  He writes a weekly blog called ReTHINK which may be accessed at www.rethinkingnews.wordpress.com. He may be contacted at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..