TORONTO – The turkey, the stuffing and the mashed potatoes – for the first time in many years, Alabama man Kevin Decker gets to eat Thanksgiving dinner.
After a lifetime of suffering from digestive diseases and looming organ failure, Decker is having turkey dinner Thursday night thanks to a rare operation that saved his life.
The 47-year-old man, musician and grandpa has had his fair share of surgeries, trips to the emergency room and infections that left him gravely ill. He has no colon or small intestine and survived on nutrition supplied to him through an IV drip for years.
His story is food for thought for the rest of us who eat our meals daily without any issues.
“I couldn’t eat food. I spent the biggest part of my life in hunger – the entire time.”
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Because he didn’t have a colon or small intestine, he developed short bowel syndrome – this meant that his body couldn’t absorb nutrition.
The IV nutrients were keeping him alive. Still, the artificial feeding isn’t the same as going through the motions of enjoying a meal. Decker was weak and in constant pain.
“We all, as humans, love to eat but we never feel or understand how much suffering a human being will have or will experience when they cannot eat a meal that we simply take it for granted,” Dr. Kareen Aby-Elmagd, a Cleveland Clinic expert, said.
Last summer, Decker and his wife moved from Alabama to Cleveland for a small intestine transplant in hopes that it would change his life.
While other organ transplants have become commonplace in health care, small intestine transplants are still pretty rare. These operations openly began in the 1990s.
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In July, Decker was placed on the organ donor list. Five days later he had his transplant.
“There is a cure, there is a miracle for you, a small bowel transplant, if that’s what your body needs, is truly possible today when just a few years ago it wasn’t even a thought,” Decker said.
He’ll have to stay in Cleveland for another year for medical requirements under the small intestine transplant program.
But Thursday, for the first time in two years, he’ll be able to eat Thanksgiving dinner with his family.
carmen.chai@globalnews.ca
Follow @Carmen_Chai
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