Cloverdale man donates liver to friend in need

It wasn’t wrapped with festive paper, ribbons or bows, but a piece of Jon Aplin’s liver was the Christmas gift of a lifetime for 58-year-old Jack Rego.

For more than 20 years, Rego had lived with hepatitis C, a liver-damaging disease shared by more than ?2.7 million Americans. He was relieved in April when his doctor put him on the liver transplant list.

“I told him I was ready to move ahead and get it done,” Rego said.

He soon learned there were two options: a whole liver from a cadaver or a partial one from a living donor.

Not comfortable asking anyone outside of his immediate family to consider donating, he was pretty sure the cadaver liver was going to be his best alternative. Unfortunately, patients are often too sick to undergo the procedure by the time their names work their way to the top of the list.

At church, Rego shared his story with the pastor’s wife and a member named Gabrielle Aplin, asking for their prayers.

“I was willing to get a blessing, but I wasn’t actively seeking a living donor,” Rego said. “If there was to be one, though, I wanted it to be from someone’s heart to my heart, not because I put them on the spot.”

Later that day, Gabrielle Aplin told her husband Jon about Rego’s plight. Jon Aplin says he didn’t give it much thought at the time, but the following week at church, he asked Rego for more details.

He found out that one of Rego’s sons tried to be a donor but didn’t qualify. Asked what it would take, Rego said the person would first have to be the same blood type, adding, “Mine is 0 positive.”

Aplin recalls, “Just as I said, ‘So is mine,’ the pressure on my head went up and there was a grip on my heart. I tried to speak more, but it was like a hand covered my mouth. I put my hand on Jack’s shoulder, held it there for a minute, then got up and left.”

Aplin wrestled with his decision all week and, after services the following Sunday, met privately with Gabrielle, Rego and Rego’s wife, Denise. He told them he felt this is what God wanted him to do, and he was ready to move forward until such time as the doctors told him otherwise.

“Denise cried, Gabrielle smiled and Jack laid his head back,” Aplin recalls. “I could see the impact this had on him, an answer to (his) prayer.”

Denise says when she realized it was really going to happen, all she could think was that her husband was going to live and spend time with their grandchildren.

Over the next few months, 57-year-old Aplin went through a battery of tests, both physical and psychological. Not only did he need to be in top physical condition, doctors needed to confirm that he understood beyond a shadow of a doubt what he was doing and to satisfy themselves that he was not being coerced in any way.

The months of testing and waiting were hard on the Regos and time-consuming for Aplin. When the doctor asked about fear, Aplin told him there was no fear because God’s peace was beyond all understanding.

“Either way it’s a win-win for me,” he told the doctor. “Here, I’m with family. There, I’m with God.”

Surgery was finally scheduled for Oct. 2 at UC San Francisco Medical Center. By the next morning, Aplin was ready to visit his friend.

“I got up around 11 a.m. and went to see Jack in ICU,” Aplin said. “I gave him a teddy bear, which he named Bear, and we spent about 45 minutes together.”

Alone in his room, Rego says he lay there silently chanting, “I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive” to the rhythmic sounds of his liver monitor. His wife also found comfort in the soothing sound, likening it to hearing a baby’s heartbeat for the first time.

Both men were hospitalized for seven days, the first three of which Rego spent in the ICU. On discharge day, Aplin weighed one pound less than he did the day he arrived, the exact weight of the donated liver section.

Could Rego feel the new liver, Aplin asked his friend. If so, what did it feel like?

Rego’s response: “It feels like new life.”

Contact Cloverdale Towns Correspondent Mary Jo Winter at Cloverdale.Towns@gmail.com.