Organ donation lobbyist gets transplant

"There wasn't any one thing," said Pinjuv of the feeling that came over her just two days before her liver transplant on May 28. "I just knew that I was going to walk from this life to the other side."

Pinjuv, who only 10 months earlier had made a plea to Northern Nevada residents to become organ donors, waited patiently by the phone, hoping for a call that would give her new life.

"I was so full of the poisons from having a failing liver that I was not thinking properly," she said. "I was planning for my funeral."

The 42-year-old Pinjuv was just finishing her masters degree in counseling at the University of Nevada, Reno, when she was diagnosed with primary biliary cirrhosis of the liver. It was something that her physician said had most likely been progressing for at least 10 years. It showed up in her blood tests.

Active in tennis, skiing, and community activities, she said she hadn't been sick or noticed any difference in her physical abilities. She noted changes to her skin color - jaundice - and her stamina faltered. She had lived with that liver disease diagnosis for the past seven years.

During the last week, she said the doctors at Stanford Medical Center had ordered her stay at home, close to a phone.

"When the call came through, it was like a party in the house," she said. Her husband, John, answered the phone, and was stunned that the call had come.

Transplant surgery took eight hours. She recovered for five days in the hospital and three weeks in an out-patient recovery center near the hospital. She now consumes 40 pills a day, and hopes to get that number down.

Her complexion and whites of her eyes have cleared.

Throughout her illness, she didn't relax. She has played a key role in the Volunteers for Life, an organization that works to educate the public in the proper methods for organ donation.

She lobbied the Legislature to get donor ID cards legally binding. In addition to getting Department of Motor Vehicle computers up to speed on donor information and aid directed donation.

"I'll be after organ donation even more," she said of being back to good health. "I already have plans to be with the governor within this month."

Pinjuv said she has returned to counseling with patients who are organ recipients.

"We're trying to put together a state registry now," she said. "It will allow us to track donors."

In addition, the Transplant Network is being established to aid transplant patients. This nonprofit group will help all transplant patients and provide donor awareness.

"It's just not necessary for people to nearly die before getting a donated organ," Pinjuv said. "No one should be as sick as I was before they get a new organ."

She said that doctors are saying that death of an organ occurs, but can be overcome.

"They said this is trading an incurable disease for a manageable disease," she said.

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