New Bedford grad receives liver transplant

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New Bedford grad receives liver transplantBy M. Furfari/ Staff WriterThursday, June 9, 2005New graduate Alan Bittenson didn't know that when the phone rang 9 a.m. Monday that it would be The Call.

By that afternoon, Bittenson, who suffers from primary sclerosing cholangitis, a liver disease that clogs liver ducts, was prepped and ready for surgery at New England Medical Center in Boston to receive a liver transplant that he and his family hoped would save him.

"Alan had his liver transplant yesterday. The surgery was very long, he's not awake yet, but it went very well. We're very excited," said Carol Bittenson. "It's amazing timing. For Alan, he was finished up with everything he had to do...and then he got a call Monday morning."

Bittenson was featured last week in a column in the Bedford Minuteman by Mike Rosenberg.

A New England Medical Center spokesperson said that Bittenson was still in intensive care Tuesday afternoon, and his mother confirmed that he had made it through surgery, but had not awakened.

"We don't know for sure, they are hoping he'll wake up sometime [Tuesday] afternoon or early evening," she said.

When he does wake, Bittenson will recover several weeks in the hospital and head home for several months of recovery.

"He'll want visitors but he doesn't want them yet," she said.

Bittenson was scheduled to go into surgery in the summer in a complex surgery where his mother would serve as the live donor. Half of her liver would be removed and given to her son, the two halves would ideally re-grow.

Bittenson recently deferred his freshman year at Brandeis University in order to recover and take back some of the time he lost due to the disease's effects.

"He's going to defer a year, and he has a long list of things he'd like to accomplish of things he didn't get to do this year," his mother said. "But even so I think he's making the right choice."

The call came during a period of area graduations, a time historically busy for high school graduates. The Bittenson's don't know where the liver came from, but know that it came from someone in the Boston area.

"They don't tell you who it is, we've made guesses and other people will make guesses as well. It's someone who was an older teenager, 16 or 17 years old, and we feel badly for the family and for the other teenagers," she said. "Whenever something like this happens it's someone else's tragedy."

Bittenson and his father had talked last week his mother said, and they discussed that the time of year could be right to get a call.

"Alan had said just the night before, that if he didn't get a call this week he didn't think he'd get a call and was thinking about all the different things that that means," she said.

This report was compiled with materials from Mike Rosenberg.

http://www2.townonline.com/bedford/graduation/view.bg?articleid=263623 & format=text

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