Paying it 26.2 miles forward

There is a spot on the Boston Marathon route called “The Liver Mile.” It’s where the grind begins, where the storied course starts to tests runners and where legs often weary from pounding 16.8 miles of punishing roads. Yet, it’s also where 21-year-old Tom Williams, a liver transplant recipient from Dracut, Massachusetts, first fell in love with the idea of running the Boston Marathon. “I wasn’t thinking about the difficulty of it,” he says. “I was just thinking, I want to run for other people who are sick.” Located in front of Newton-Wellesley Hospital, “The Liver Mile” is where volunteers hand out water and gather in support of the Run for Research team, which raises money to benefit the American Liver Foundation. For years, while someone else ran for him as part of the patient-partner program, Tom was a spectator on the sidelines. The biggest race of his life Nearly 10 years ago, Tom began struggling against a host of ailments — chronic fatigue, scabs on his legs and feet, jaundice and internal bleeding — all brought on by primary sclerosing cholangitis, a rare autoimmune liver disease that slowly damages the bile ducts. The only long-term solution is a liver transplant. “It was hard for me to understand,” he says. “I was very scared.” Tom persevered through another three years of debilitating symptoms and multiple surgeries before receiving his liver transplant in May 2010. Boston Children’s Hospital surgeons Dr. Khashayar...
Source: Thrive, Children's Hospital Boston - Category: Pediatrics Authors: Tags: Diseases & Conditions Our Patients’ Stories Boston Marathon Dr. Heung-Bae Kim Dr. Khashavar Vakili Liver transplant Liver Transplant Program Pediatric Transplant Center (PTC) primary sclerosing cholangitis Source Type: news