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Waiting For The Call

With a portable oxygen tank, Steve Garrison has some mobility as he awaits a lung transplant. Garrison uses a golf cart to take his Labrador retriever, Spot, down to a small lake behind their Lakeview Drive, Commerce, house. Garrison suffers from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, and his only hope for survival is a lung transplant.

The World’s Problems Are ‘Unimportant’
As Steve Garrison Awaits Transplant Call
For a man whose very life depends on a phone call saying that the right organ donor has died, Steve Garrison is awfully patient.
The owner of Commerce Tire Co., Garrison, 61, suffers from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Without a lung transplant, he will die.
Garrison and his wife, Janice, now live in a building owned by the University of Alabama across the street from the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital where, if a donor is found, the transplant will take place.
In a sense, he’s waiting for the phone to ring. So far, it has rung three times, but in each case once doctors got a look at the donor’s organs, they decided they were not suitable for a transplant.
IPF, as it is known, is a “disease of inflammation that results in scarring, or fibrosis, of the lungs,” says the noairtogo.com website devoted to the disease. “In time, this fibrosis can build up to the point where the lungs are unable to provide oxygen to the tissues of the body.”
The causes are not known, but it is not related to smoking, and Garrison quickly points out he has never smoked.
It’s the same disease Ninth District Rep. Charlie Norwood had. Norwood got a lung transplant and is recovering; Garrison hopes for the same.
Although he says he has not officially been told so, Garrison believes he is in the final stages of the disease. His basis for that conclusion is that he can trace the ailment back five years and the average time between diagnosis of the disease and death is “five to six years.”
He recalls trying to build lung capacity by using a treadmill five years ago “because I couldn’t breathe.” The diagnosis was not made until 16 months ago. He went on oxygen to assist his breathing in March, 2004, and then went on it virtually full time earlier this year.
The good news is that doctors have told him he is at or near the top of the list for lung recipients in this part of the country.
“The right person dying, that’s the most precious gift somebody can give,” Garrison notes. “If God’s going to give any credits for anything, somebody who gives organs ought to get a lot of credit for that.”
Being with other people at the Birmingham facility, all either in treatment or awaiting transplants, helps Garrison cope with the uncertainty.
“Most of the time, I cope pretty good. We’re over there in Alabama and everybody on my floor has some major disease, most of it life-threatening,” he said. “We just get around and have a good time every night. All of us can look and see somebody in worse shape than ourselves.”
He finds that life-threatening disease is a great equalizer.
“They are a mixture of people in different walks of life. How much money anyone has is not important. Being around other people with problems is the important issue and each one will help the other person with anything they can do.
“What most everybody else sees as major problems of the world are not very important to us,” he continued. “Our (everyday) problems are not important to us. Just being around each other, seeing what God has done for us - those things are important.”
The patients become close to one another through the shared experience of life’s uncertainty.
“There’s about four different groups of us that would be welcome in my house at any time,” he says. “Some are less fortunate than I’ve been in my life - that’s not important. They’re still welcome in my house.”
The change in perspective extends to other areas.
Garrison and his brother, Paul, have put aside some long-standing differences to be real brothers again.
“My brother and I could have spent the rest of our lives - we would have 20-25 years (without the disease) and waited until the last minute,” he said. “All of the sudden you have no time left. When something like this comes up, you don’t have a lot of time left.”
With his lungs encumbered, Garrison stays attached to an oxygen supply. In his house is a machine that makes oxygen and feeds it to him through 40 or more feet of tubing. In the garage a tank of liquid oxygen is used to re-fill a portable container on his belt that gives him about four hours of mobility, although the disease also imposes limitations on exertion.
Still, he has learned to appreciate life’s little blessings, the flowers he can see out his window, the concern of friends, birds and squirrels in the trees, even the clouds.
“I appreciate what God has done for us on Earth, giving us things to see,” he says.
Part of the adjustment is knowing when the call comes from the hospital that the odds are still not great.
“The first time, I really thought it was going to happen,” he recalls. “But when it didn’t, it didn’t. It was not any big letdown, let me put it that way. The second time was the next day and again there wasn’t any letdown. They asked me if I had any anxiety over the organs not being useful and I said, no, none at all.”
After the second call in two days, the Garrisons figured it would be better to move to Birmingham so they would not have to make a three-hour drive on short notice. They’ve been there seven weeks, and their third call happened to occur just hours after they’d arrived back in Commerce for a short stay.
“They said they thought they were going to have a go and wanted to know if I wanted to come,” he recalled. “I said yes, and they said to hold on, that they would call me when it was necessary. About five hours later, it turned out that the organs were not compatible. I said, ‘OK, I appreciate you calling me.’ To know you are still actively being called makes you feel better.”
The experience has taught Garrison to take one day at a time.
“My son-in-law and my daughter and Valerie Tucker and everybody down at the store are taking care of that,” he says. “Important day-to-day issues are not important anymore. I’ve got only one issue, and I have no control over it.”
The experience has also “intensified” his thoughts about religion. Instead of asking “Why me?”, he remains thankful for God’s blessings and says he is prepared for whatever happens.
“I hope I am not lying to myself, but in my mind, I think this is a good journey I have been on, and if it’s over soon, then I just start another journey with God,” he explains. “My body may be in the ground, but my spirit will go on.”
He also realizes that while some people may consider his situation unique, it really is not.
On his floor at the Birmingham apartment are two other people awaiting lung transplants, one person recovering from a bad burn and four people who need heart transplants to live.
“I’m just one person with a problematic disease. There are a lot of other people who have bad diseases. I am not unique.”
He is appreciative of those who pray for him too.
“When people pray, I may not know it at the moment, but you can feel that people pray for you,” he says. “Prayers are answered - the answer you get may not be the answer you want, but they are answered...you have to pray and the Lord will take care of things in the way they need to be taken care of.”
Not surprisingly, Garrison has become an organ donor.
“I was not an organ donor before,” he admits, “for the worst of reasons. I was just too lazy to sign up for it. Once I found out I had a problem, I signed up (his other organs remain in good shape). I didn’t understand what being an organ donor means. That’s why most people aren’t donors, I guess. In reality, your organs are no good once you die. They are deteriorating and then they are gone.”
When the call comes and the lung proves suitable, he will receive a single lung; some other recipient would get the other. The operation would take four to five hours, he said, with recuperation taking another six weeks.
His insurance will cover the transplant, but it will not cover the cost of procuring the lung, which could be as high as $50,000.
But that’s one of those “everyday” problems that does not matter. What counts is finally getting that phone call and finding that the donor had sound lungs and matching blood type and tissue.
It’s a call worth waiting for.