After long wait, Seattle schoolteacher gets a liver transplant

For two years now, every time the phone rang at odd hours, Jack Slater and his wife, Deborah Swets, thought, "This is it."

But when the call came yesterday at 9:10 a.m., amid the morning bustle of Swets trying to push off to work, there was no dramatic pause before she grabbed the phone. It was the hospital.

Slater took the receiver. "Dr. Levy asked me to call," the nurse said, "to see if you are available for a liver transplant."

Late last night, Slater was in surgery at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle. He was wheeled into the operating room about 7 p.m. Four hours later, transplant surgeon Dr. Adam Levy had removed Slater's liver and was stitching in the donor organ.

Amid yesterday's jumble of tests, needle pokes, eyes peering over clipboards and calls from loved ones, Slater took a few moments to reflect on the final hours of his wait. Here's what he told us.

The phone call

"When that phone call came, I loved this woman on the phone. ... I feel exceedingly healthy and I couldn't say no when they called. You know, they ask, are you available for a transplant today? And you just have to say yes. That's the rules of the game. ...

"You just have to think, you just have to plunge in. You can't wade in to the ankles, then the calves, then your knees, then your thighs. You have to go in, and you'll be so glad you did. ... And that's where I am right now. I'm just, I'm plunging."

The donor

"One of my friends called and said tomorrow is the ... equinox and that's when the harvest begins. And that's the word the hospital uses, they're going to harvest an organ for me. ...

"Somebody, some family is terrified with grief right now, and their life will never be the same because one of their loved ones died. And I can think about that, and I do think about that. ... What kind of words can you say about somebody who donates their organ, so that I can wander aimlessly through my life again?"

Feeling lucky

"Every time I come into the hospital, the University of Washington Medical Center, and I see all the machines and all the cleanliness and all of the thoroughness and the racks and racks of test tubes and disposable gowns and gloves and the units of everything they have here, I just say I'm so lucky ... to not be in Afghanistan. I feel so lucky to not be in most parts of the world. I feel so lucky to be at this particular hospital.

"Having a MELD score of 15 [a composite number that reflects a liver patient's health status] and being able to receive a liver is sort of rare in the rest of the country. You have to be much sicker than I am, typically, or so I've been told."

The waiting ends

"It's a relief. ... I have every intention of reclaiming my life. ... To be able to travel, to be able to enjoy the company of more than four or five people at a time. ... Every time I go to Franklin High School [where he taught history], I get hug fatigue."

If something goes wrong?

"You know, I just can't ask, I can't focus on that question. It's now or never. ... If I get a stroke in there, and I can't speak, and I can't read, or I smile like this [he freezes half his face] ... I don't want to live like that. ... But I am convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that everything is going to be all right.

"But I can have a sense of humor about death. ... I love the bit where Leroy meets Jimmy Joe on the street and Leroy says, 'Hey man, did you hear about Slater?'

'What happened?'

'Yeah, well, he died.'

'Oh man, that's too bad.'

'Yeah, it's too bad. He was a good guy.'

'Yeah, he was.'

'So are you kind of hungry? Wanna go get something to eat?'

"And that's it. You're gone."

Imagining the gurney ride

"I went to see a hypnotherapist once and he hypnotized me because I was getting anxious about things and I thought I needed some of that. But first, we spent the first session out of three talking about my favorite subject, which is me ... and he told me, 'Based upon what you told me about your friends and your support network ... you don't need hypnotherapy. What I could recommend to you is that when that gurney is going down the hall, be aware of all of the people who love you.' And that's almost like a transcendent thing. ... And so I want to maintain that feeling — I don't want to forget."

As Slater took the real gurney ride last night, with his wife, close friends and brother by his side, he said, "This is the imagined becoming real."

Julia Sommerfeld: 206-464-2708 or jsommerfeld@seattletimes.com