How this San Joaquin Valley woman helped save her father’s life
David Oppedyk had a bad liver and little chance of getting a new one in time.
The 52-year-old Tulare man suffered from liver cirrhosis and was near the bottom of a long waiting list for organ donations in November 2019. But then his luck changed.
Taking a chance on finding a living donor, family members underwent testing to determine whether any of them was a compatible match. His daughter Alyssa, a 24-year-old nursing student, matched. She jumped at the opportunity to help her father.
“My dad needed a new liver, and we had the option of doing the living donation, so I said ‘why not,’ said Alyssa. “I’m a nursing student, so I am all for organ donation.”
Due to the more stringent health precautions put in place during the coronavirus pandemic, the Oppedyk family feared they would not be able to complete the transplant. They worried one of them would get COVID-19 before the surgery, but they also feared the operation would be pushed back.
“We didn’t want to get COVID before because we didn’t want to postpone the surgery,” said Alyssa. “We kind of had to do it June because I go back to school in August, so that was the only thing that was scary because we didn’t want to delay the surgery any longer.”
Liver transplant surgery
The Oppedyk duo was admitted for surgery on June 3. They were put under the following morning at around 8 a.m. Alyssa’s surgery took about seven hours to complete, while David took around 10 hours.
The University of California, San Francisco Medical Center allowed the Oppedyks to have one visitor at a time, so Alyssa’s mother and grandmother alternated seeing David and Alyssa during their stay in the hospital.
The two were in the hospital for five days. Wife and mother, Tracy Oppedyk, said, “They got released together, so we got to take them home together, which was nice.”
John Roberts, professor of surgery at UCSF and one of the surgeons for the Oppedyk transplants, said that UCSF does around 20 to 30 living donor transplants a year. Living donor transplants are common in areas where there are not enough deceased donors to fill the need. Hospitals will do anywhere from 300 to 400 living donor surgeries a year in places like Korea or Taiwan.
Roberts said that recipients and donors have high life expediencies, and their prospects are usually not impacted by the living donor transplant.
Recovering from surgery
After the surgery, Alyssa stayed with her parents in Tulare for a month, helping her mother take care of her father. As a labor and delivery nurse for 27 years at Kaweah Delta, Tracy is well practiced in aiding sick and recovering patients, but having Alyssa around was a big help.
Alyssa said her nursing training helped her identify the causes of her pain and determine whether it was infected.
More than seven weeks out from the surgery, Alyssa is feeling mostly back to normal. David has also had a smooth recovery, though he has the added strain of getting used to new medications and healing from surgery and liver cirrhosis.
“David is anxious to get back to work, and Alyssa is anxious to get back to school,” said Tracy. “They both enjoy doing both of those things.”
David manages a dairy farm. Alyssa, when not in school, works as an in-home care provider.
“I have gotten to experience the patient perspective,” Alyssa said. “So I can be more empathetic toward my future patients.”
This story was originally published August 3, 2020 at 5:00 AM.