No Mountain Too High For Liver Recipient

No mountain is too high for London's Heather Fisher to climb. The 45-year-old London, Ont., nurse and liver recipient climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro six years after her transplant.

"I received a letter in the mail from a guy who had had a heart transplant and who was putting together a Canadian team. I immediately called him and said, 'I'm there! Count me in.' All my life with liver disease I was unable to do things. Though I always believed I was in charge of my disease and it was not in charge of me, I needed a goal."

She made it to the top -- a feat accomplished by less than one-third of the people who attempt it -- and now Fisher is a regular participant in the Canadian Transplant Games Association, having just returned  from the World Tranplant Games in Budapest, Hungary.

At 29, by the time Fisher's liver gave out and she was put on the transplant list, she had worked as a nurse taking care of patients with liver failure. She was aware that out of the five transplants at that time, only one had been successful.

But when her doctor told her, 'If you don't take this chance, I can't guarantee you'll be here for Christmas,' it took her all of three seconds to decide to go ahead.

Four months later, a match wasfound and she went to the hospital where she had worked.

"I knew a lot of people there. I came in through admitting and people said, 'Hi there, how are you doing?' I said, 'I'm fine and I'm here for a transplant.' They were all pretty surprised."

Thirteen hours later, Fisher had a new liver.

"One of the first things I heard my parents say was, 'Look at her eyes, look at her eyes!' With the liver disease I had had yellow eyes since the age of 14. My mom and dad noticed that the whites of my eyes where indeed white, not yellow like before. It meant the liver was working."

By Marilyn Linton