My name is David Anthony McIntyre, I am a 61 year old Father of two beautiful daughters. I have never been much of a drinker and in fact haven’t touched alcohol for over 30 years. I don’t smoke or do drugs unless a doctor prescribes them to me.

I’m probably the last person you would expect to get liver disease but I did. It was diagnosed roughly about a year and an half ago and has progressed to what is called “end stage liver disease” or cirrhosis.

But there are many complications that can develop along with the cirrhosis, there are secondary and tertiary diseases that can develop.

When your liver stops working correctly you can develop a secondary disease called a “portosystemic shunt” (also known as a liver or hepatic shunt).

This is a rare medical condition in which blood from your digestive organs does not reach the liver. Unfortunately, I have developed this secondary disease along with the cirrhosis.

The liver typically receives blood from two sources:

The hepatic artery delivers oxygen-rich blood from the heart.

The portal vein moves blood from the spleen, stomach, pancreas, and intestines into the liver.

Blood from the portal vein is rich in nutrients absorbed in the gastrointestinal tract, which the liver processes before the blood flows back into the heart through the hepatic veins.

If it does not then you can also develop “Hepatic Encephalopathy”. Which I have also developed and suffer from.

A “liver shunt” is an unnatural connection that develops between the portal vein and systemic veins. The shunt causes blood to bypass the liver partially or completely, causing complications.

Due to the “Liver Shunts” I developed I also developed this tertiary disease, “Hepatic Encephalopathy” which causes toxins in my blood that the liver was supposed to clear out to make it to my brain where it causes much confusion, odd mental episodes, forgetfulness and at it’s worst blacking out.

Often times when this disease is found it’s well developed and can cause a person who blacks out to go into a coma and die.

I have had two episodes of this blacking out which results in a long hospitalization each time. Luckily, I survived those.

It is a constant battle to maintain the proper medications in my blood that keep this secondary disease at bay by binding to toxins particularly Ammonia and gets rid of it through your waste.

The Liver Clinic at the University of Washington concurred with my local doctors that I am now in “End Stage Liver Failure”.

I’ve been told by no less than five doctors on that team that I likely have up to two years before this takes my life. And it has already been one year since they told me that.

They tell me the only hope is a “liver transplant” and they put me on the national liver transplant wait list. The problem is that there are far more people needing transplants than there are donated healthy cadaver livers available.

Many times people graciously sign on to be a liver donor but after they pass away it’s found that they didn’t have a healthy enough liver for transplant and that further limits the number of available livers.

The very best option then is to find someone close to you who meets all the criteria and the will to be a “Living Liver Donor”.

This is where surgeons work on both the donor and the recipient at the exact same time. They take a portion of the donors liver and place it into the recipient where their diseased liver used to be.

these are generally successful transplants and the amazing human body will actually regrow full sized and completely functioning livers in both the donor and the recipient.

This is what I am hoping to accomplish. I contacted everyone I know to see if they would be willing to donate. I spoke with over 50 people about this but most were either too old, or to heavy or has high risk behaviors that instantly eliminates them from consideration.

The stars finally aligned for me when a friend of mine graciously volunteered to donate a portion of their liver to me. This friend meets all the health criteria and even has the same blood type as me.

I am so grateful to the Lord for this person.

Even though insurance will pay for the bulk of the costs there are still several costs that must be born by the recipient (me).

Some of those costs are housing in a hotel that the hospital owns that is near the University of Washington Medical Center so the patient and the recipient have a place to stay for a period of time after their initial hospital stays.

This is just to make sure they are completely healed and don’t have to make a long drive to the hospital if there is a complication that arises.

Most of those housing costs are covered by donations from former liver transplant recipients and their families but there is still a co-pay type scenario for the recipient to pay out of pocket.

So, I’m not asking for this GoFundMe effort to pay for the large Hospital bills that are as I said covered primarily by insurance.

But rather I’m trying to mitigate the Co-Pay costs that will fall to me once everything is successfully completed.

It will still be a huge bill.

Thank you for your consideration, and God bless you.

David McIntyre