TL; DR: After almost a year of being critically ill and unable to work, our amazing friend Jodi Kozenko Rentz is receiving a live donor liver transplant on Oct. 28th, 2021. Please contribute anything you can to help her out while she recovers from transplant surgery and sees her daughter Anna through the rest of senior year and plans for Anna's college! ❤️❤️ Please SHARE and encourage EVERYONE you know to take a few minutes to meet our Jodi! SCROLL THE WHOLE WAY DOWN for lots of photos!

 

 

My name is Ellen Lettrich and I met Jodi Rentz in the spring of 1993, when we were Ellen Moran and Jodi Kozenko and both auditioning for the summer season at Apple Hill Playhouse in Delmont, PA, outside of Pittsburgh. Jodi was in college at Carlow, an incredibly smart, hilarious, fun-loving, talented, LOUD young woman. :) After losing touch in the pre-social media age, we reconnected in the spring of 2020 as I was thinking of moving out of NYC to VA - and we both decided it would be a fabulous idea for me to move into Jodi's apartment complex. And it was! We had a blast in the summer of 2020, and then Jodi's health took a terrible turn. She had a constellation of severe symptoms: extreme leg pain and swelling, waking up with blood in her mouth, coughing up blood, and extreme fatigue.

 

From March 7 to June 18th, 2021, Jodi endured 3 separate emergency hospitalizations, with 21 days total in the ICU, sedated and ventilated (NOT Covid-related at all), and 30 days in step-down units - 51 total days in the hospital! My vibrant, 48 year old friend was emaciated almost beyond recognition, with jaundiced eyes and skin, and barely able to walk. From her first hospital admission in March, it was clear that she was in end-stage liver failure and would need a liver transplant. During her 3 hospitalizations, she endured more than 60 (!!!) surgical procedures in the OR, to tie off gastric bleeds and to release the arterial blood that had built up in her right leg. She received 57 (!!!) blood transfusions over the course of her hospitalizations.

 

The severity of Jodi's condition during her 3rd hospitalization in June 2021 cannot be overstated. She was home with her incredible 17 year old daughter, Anna, when she began to feel really ill. To make a very long and graphic story short, I took Anna to work and at her request went to check on Jodi, whom I found passed out in a pool of blood in her bathroom, with blood everywhere. If you know Jodi at all, you know she is maaaaaybe a little stubborn :), and also a medical expert (truly). She argued with me about calling 911, but after she vomited blood twice more, I told her I didn't care what she said and I was calling 911. By then she was moving into shock; she remembers none of this. When Jodi arrived in the ER, her prognosis was dire. Later that night, despite successfully inserting a potentially life-saving stent through her jugular vein in what is called a TIPS procedure, Jodi's incredible medical team at Bon Secours St. Francis Hospital couldn't stop her internal bleeding. At that point, it was nearly certain she would not live through the night, and she was given last rites.

 

But Jodi's higher power WANTS HER HERE!!! Through the love and dedication of her sister Lisa and daughter Anna, her family of friends, her AA tribe, her incredible medical team, and her LIVE liver donor, Tiffany Kidd Wormuth, Jodi is getting a new partial liver at UVA Hospital! Oct, 28, 2021, is LIVER LIFTOFF!!

 

Jodi has worked her butt off to do EVERYTHING her doctors recommended, successfully upping her far-too-low BMI by cooking and eating ONLY what she has been instructed to eat (aided by an amazing meal train providing delicious low-sodium options for ANYTHING). As you can see from some of the photos here, almost all of which were taken this summer, she went from looking incredibly sick to being the healthiest-looking critically ill person you may have ever seen. Her liver is not functioning at all, but she has worked herself back into great health otherwise - so her transplant prognosis is EXCELLENT!

 

ANYTHING you can contribute to help Jodi and Anna out until she is fully back on her feet and able to work is so appreciated. My wish is for those of you who haven't met Jodi - and there are SO MANY of you out there praying for her - is to be able to meet her at a big "JODI HAS A GREAT LIVER" party - if you know Jodi and me, this will OBVIOUSLY BE AT OUR POOL :) - next summer. She owned her destructive decisions and faced her alcoholism head on well before her liver decided it was done, and she has SO MUCH to offer the world. She has continued to be an amazing mom, dog & cat mom, dog aunty/bff (to my dog), sister, daughter, and friend despite sometimes barely being able to move. She is SO ready to get back to optometry, back to theatre, back to seeing her 86 year old dad in Latrobe, back to planning her purposely belated 30th high school reunion, & back to watching Anna continue to grow. To quote Ragtime, we can never go back to before - and that isn't at all what Jodi has planned. All the best parts of our Jodi remain intact, and you KNOW she'll be out making new friends everywhere, buying her people thoughtful gifts just because, and cracking us all up on a regular basis as soon as she can.

 

We love you, Jodi!