By KEVIN CHIRI
Slidell news bureau
PEARL RIVER – For a young 27-year-old woman, Keri Cochran has already had more than her share of hardships in life.
And now that she is waiting for a liver transplant, it would be easy to shake her fist at God and ask “why me?”
Cochran said she certainly went through times of anger and questions for God when she was 19 and had her first baby, a beautiful son who was stillborn.
Now, battling a blood clotting disease called Buddchiari Syndrome—only one person in a million ever gets it—her liver is barely surviving due to the lack of blood flow. She was put on the list for a liver transplant on April 17 of this year and explained the difficulty in dealing with the disease, not to mention the anxiety waiting for her phone to ring.
“Every time the phone rings you jump,” she said. “I could get the call in five minutes or in five months.”
Cochran has been dealing with Buddchiari Syndrome for five years, initially thinking she had a bad flu bug when she was 21 and was experiencing symptoms like body aches and nausea. Three months later, when doctors finally diagnosed the disease that leads to blood clots in her body, she has dealt with body aches and pain over the past five years since the blood clots lead to increased fluid accumulating in her abdomen.
When her doctors decided earlier this year that her liver was at a critical stage and needed to be replaced she faced another huge question.
“If you are a woman and going to get a liver transplant you have to agree to never have children again,” she said as tears began to run down her cheeks. “That was so hard, but it was either that, or to know I wouldn’t live.”
Cochran had several other miscarriages after her stillborn birth, but fortunately married a “wonderful man” who had three small children that she now calls her own.
“I love these children as if they were mine,” she said. “So knowing I had these three made it a little easier to accept not having children of my own. Besides we are going to adopt or foster children once I get past all this.”
Cochran had to go in for birth control surgery that permanently ended her ability to have children, all part of the stipulations to be added on the liver transplant waiting list.
Since June, she has been called four times as a possible recipient of a liver transplant, once as the primary individual and three times as the backup. But in every case she was unable to get the transplant for varying reasons.
“Sometimes a person ahead of you gets it, or when I was the primary person, the liver failed the tests to see if it would be compatible with me,” she said.
Her mother, Yvonne, came from Georgia in March to stay with Keri when she became sick, and now is staying permanently since a requirement of being on the transplant list is to have a person with you 24/7 in the event of getting a call.
“We know the right liver is waiting for Keri and the other times it wasn’t the right one for her,” Yvonne said. “We know this is all in God’s time and that’s what helps us remain patient.”
Both Cochran and her mother admitted that waiting for a liver to be available creates some unusual feelings as you wait day-after-day for the phone to ring.
“Sometimes I’m watching the news and see a fatal accident and I wonder, ‘will that be my liver?’ I feel like I’m a bad person for thinking that, but I can’t help it,” Cochran said. “I know God does everything for a reason so whether it was my son being stillborn, or this, I find that the best medicine is to pray and to talk to the people at my church.”
The big challenge now for Cochran is raising enough money to be prepared for at least three months living in New Orleans after she has the transplant. It is another requirement of going through that kind of surgery and will be a strain for her husband, who is the only one working now.
“We are thankful to have health insurance through my husband’s company, but it’s going to be very hard when I have to stay in New Orleans for three months or more,” Cochran said. “That’s where my church has helped so much. They have been holding garage sales, bake sales, blood drives and cookbook sales to help us start saving.”
Keri was one of two children born when her mother lived in California before her mom moved to North Carolina when she married for the second time, suddenly seeing her family grow by four children that her new husband already had. The family grew to seven when her mother and step-father took in a 15-year-old girl who had no family after her mother died of cancer.
Cochran was married at the age of 19 and moved to New Orleans with her husband, but the marriage only lasted a year before she moved in with a friend and eventually met Josh, the man who would later marry her and give her three children with a simple “I do.”
Cochran began having flu-like symptoms at the age of 21 that included swelling in her abdomen. Without health insurance at the time she wouldn’t go to the doctor until a friend saw her for the first time in over a month and immediately said, “we are going to the emergency room right now. I guess I hadn’t realized how much swelling had occurred since it increased a little at a time.”
In the hospital for almost five weeks, her weight went as high as 230 pounds due to the fluid in her body before finally being diagnosed with Buddchiari Syndrome after doctors performed a liver biopsy.
“When Josh saw how sick she was in the hospital, all before they were married, he told me he was going to get the preacher and head to the hospital right then,” Keri’s mother said. “He told me he would marry her immediately if there was any chance of her not surviving.”
Once with a diagnosis, medication helped improve her symptoms and doctors drained nearly four gallons of fluid from her abdomen to reduce the pain she was experiencing. But the liver was already badly damaged and Cochran was told she would eventually need a transplant.
“I eventually went back to work for a couple of years and managed with the medication I was on,” she said. “I really felt pretty good until about a year ago when it all started getting worse again.”
Within several months Cochran was told she could not wait any longer for a transplant, leaving her waiting for that phone call every day.
There are approximately 6,000 liver transplants a year in the U.S., however, over 17,000 people are waiting to get one. Over 1,500 people a year die in the United States waiting for a transplant.
“When I get past all this I plan to speak publicly about organ donation,” Cochran said. “I was never told anything in high school about organ donation so I never thought about it. I want to raise awareness about this issue as much as I can.”
Cochran also said she plans to adopt or foster kids since “I know I can love kids that are not really mine. I’ve done it with the three I have so I want to do that with other children.”
Josh’s employer, LeBlanc & Theriot Equipment Company in Metairie helped the family out by immediately starting their health insurance when he went to work there, rather than the usual 90 day waiting period, while Evans Creek Baptist Church continues to be a strength and support for the family trying to raise money for the added expenses coming with Keri’s situation.
Anyone who would like to help the family that includes three children, ages 10 to 13, can mail a check to Evans Creek Baptist Church, 73189 Hwy. 41, Pearl River, La., 70452.