From funeral planning to liver transplant, thanks to a living donor

STATE COLLEGE — Peggy Miller was sitting with her husband, planning her funeral when she got the call that every patient on a transplant waitlist dreams of receiving. She would be getting a liver. 

About four years prior, Miller started noticing a change in her health. She would easily forget things, lose her balance and get so shaky that she couldn’t write her name. However, having lost her son just a year prior, she attributed many of her symptoms to grief.

But when her symptoms became unmanageable, she went to multiple doctors seeking answers.

“I just was not living a life. I was just existing,” Miller shared, noting there were days where she would sleep for 18 hours at a time or wouldn’t eat.

Finally, she got a life changing diagnosis.

Miller’s liver was failing due to nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, which causes inflammation and damage to the liver due to a buildup of fat on the organ. She would need to undergo a liver transplant.

She was referred to Dr. Abhinav Humar at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, whose team helped Miller for several months to prepare physically for the surgery.

But as her health worsened, she started to accept she may not make it through.

“I had come to the conclusion that I was going to die, that I was never going to make it, that I wasn’t meant to live long enough for the transplant. I had been put on the transplant list in January of 2023 and by July my husband and I both thought, this isn’t gonna happen,” Miller said. “However, I was okay with the fact that I was dying because I thought, well, I’ll be reunited with my son. I feel that if anybody has lost a loved one, and you believe you’re going to be reunited with them, there’s no reason to fear death.”

Though Miller had embraced what she thought would be her fate, she still had mixed feelings about her time growing shorter.  

“What made me very, very sad was the thought of leaving those that loved me,” she said. “I didn’t want it because I knew the hurt that was going to be left behind. I was going to be with God, but my loved ones were going to be grieving.”

So, she sat down to have a hard conversation with her husband and the pair started planning her funeral. But those plans were quickly put on hold by the call that would change her life.

“I feel that God had all the puzzle pieces in his hand, and all of a sudden he said, ‘Wow, I think I’m just gonna let this whole puzzle go together.’ And he just dropped them and let every piece fall in place,” Miller shared.

Miller was ranked second on the transplant list. However, the pieces aligned for her when the patient ranked first on the list was unable to receive the liver, allowing her to get the critical surgery she needed.

Miller and her husband quickly packed a bag and left their State College home to go to Pittsburgh.

“There was no time to really digest or wrap my head around it, to process this is really happening,” she said.

Before she knew it, she was squeezing her husband’s hand goodbye and entering surgery.

“I have to say the surgery is not for punks,” Miller joked. “It is brutal. Both the preparation prior to it and the after part. I’m still in recovery mode. There is a lot of medication. There’s a lot of body adjustments, nourishment, physical therapy, you know, just to get you back to whatever your new normal is going to be.”

But the surgery did not just give Miller a new liver.

While prior to the surgery Miller had thought the liver she was receiving was from an organ donor who had died, post-surgery she was informed that her new liver was actually from a live donor, who happened to be right down the hall from her in the hospital and wanted to meet.

Christina Benjamin, whose partner, Brandon, was born with a liver disease, had started the process of becoming a living donor to help him get off the waitlist. However, her blood type was not a compatible match for the donation. But when Brandon did find a match, she decided to still go through with the donation so they could go through the experience together.

“We were both able to go to each other for what was happening,” Benjamin shared. “If I felt a pain, I’d ask Brandon about it and he would say, ‘Oh yeah, that’s normal. I have the same thing.’ We were both suffering and in pain, but it just made it more meaningful that we were able to do it together and heal together.”

One day while in the hospital, a nurse took Benjamin out for her daily walk. But it wasn’t just any regular walk down the hall. She started to notice the nurse was pushing her to go farther than she previously had, and before she could piece together why, she was in front of Brandon, who proposed doing the rest of their lives together, not just surgery.

In addition to gaining a fiancé, Benjamin also gained another family member.

“It was an amazing feeling,” Benjamin said about getting to meet the woman whose life she helped save. “Because Peggy lost her son, one of the first things she said to us (Benjamin and Brandon) was that she gained children. And that was probably the most heartwarming thing. After everything that she went through, everything she experienced, to be considered as her family member, that’s truly amazing.”

“I told her when I saw her come into my hospital room for the first time that I felt that she was an angel sent to me by God,” Miller said. “Her life definitely has a purpose. Her heart and her soul are as beautiful as she is. How a complete stranger would make that type of sacrifice — I am truly blessed to have her in my life.”

Still, not many people are aware that they can make the same sacrifice that Benjamin did.

“The problem with living donor liver transplants is that most people don’t know about it or are not made aware that it’s an option,” Humar explained. “We often hear from patients who are at the last stages or who are recovered from other programs, and they say, ‘Oh, I never knew that this was an option that my family member could be a donor for myself. Otherwise, I would have asked them.’ It’s probably one of the most important aspects of living donor liver transplants, this general awareness of it so that people know that it’s an option.”

Humar further explained that the majority of transplanted livers in the United States come from a deceased donor. However, living donations tend to be more common for kidneys because a donor has two, which means removing one can be easier than removing part of a liver. Since  the liver can regenerate within six to eight weeks, it is possible to donate a certain portion of it.

For Miller, Benjamin’s selfless donation has encouraged her to share her story more and to bring awareness to the opportunities for living donations.

 “Be a hero. It not only affects that individual, but the entire support group that was supporting that individual. You would be a hero to many, many people, not just the recipient,” Miller said. “Leave your mark. Leave your love and your generosity.”