When Susan Snyder had her liver transplant at The Ohio State University Medical Center, her family was on her mind – both her existing family, and her future one.
"I only knew one patient who had had a liver transplant at a different university," says the high school teacher from Mount Gilead. "We had only one child, we wanted another. I asked her if she had had any kids after the surgery, and she said no. I thought, all right…”
Snyder was diagnosed with non-specific hepatitis in her teens. By the time she reached her early 30s, she suffered greatly from fatigue, and was taking one day off each week to rest and sleep. But her physicians told her she needed to decide for herself that she was fully mentally prepared to go onto the list of patients awaiting a transplant.
It was a big and scary decision, she says. She wanted a larger family, and was frightened that a transplant might rule out that possibility. Fear also of the risks and the unknown was daunting, especially given that though she was debilitatingly fatigued, she suffered few other outward symptoms.
It was a comment from her daughter, then three, that pushed her over the line.
"She drew a picture of my husband outside working, herself playing, and I asked her, 'Where is Mommy?' And she said, 'You're inside sleeping because you're tired.'"
Snyder received her donor liver in 1992 at The Ohio State Medical Center and suffered a couple of minor complications – one round of rejection and a blood clot – that kept her in the hospital for 28 days.
After the blood clot was resolved, Snyder recalls one comment from an Ohio State physician. “She told me, 'I'll sleep much better tonight than last night.' The fact she lost sleep over me, that was comforting, and made me feel much more secure. I knew these doctors cared about what happened to me.” Snyder relates
"I'd send anyone to Ohio State," Snyder adds. "They always answered any question I had, and never made me feel like I was a bother."
One question Snyder had was finally answered in 1998 – six years after her transplant. She gave birth to her long-awaited second child, Kelsey, that year, after a smooth pregnancy.
Snyder treasures her two daughters, nine and a half years apart – and the time she is able to spend with them. Her oldest daughter, the one who drew the picture minus her sleeping mother, recently started college.
“And she does not see me sleeping on the couch at all,” Snyder adds. "I’m currently taking Taekwondo with Kelsey.”