gift of life
FALL/WINTER 2020
GIFT OF LIFE TRANSPLANT HOUSE A HOME THAT HELPS AND HEALS
Life Is A Beautiful Melody Becky and Fred McGuire have lived a life of adventure – from farming, to groundskeeping, to Alaska and finally to Rochester, MN. Their story is one of courage, tears, faith and triumph, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
blood loss due to her failing liver. She heard for the first time – “You will need a transplant”. Since there were no medical facilities doing transplants at the time in Alaska, Becky and Fred made the decision to move back to Minnesota and lived with dear friends until the family could get established.
Becky and Fred were married in September, 1974 and farmed for 8 years. With a growing family of 3 daughters and one on the way, Becky and Fred moved to town, and began a lawn business. Shortly after Christmas that same year, Fred became the janitor for the local school. Life was good for the little family but a life-long dream of living in Alaska opened up for them and they seized the opportunity.
Those were days of frequent doctor appointments, trips to the ER, phone calls from her now grown daughters asking if she had remembered to take her medications and waiting. The wait for a deceased liver donor can be up to a year, but Becky knew that to receive her gift of life, someone would have to lose theirs. She had heard of a living liver donor program at Mayo Clinic, but soon learned that Mayo Clinic was very hesitant to perform one. Her liver counts had to be critically low and throughout her wait, her numbers had been maintaining.
It was while in Alaska that Becky first heard that her liver counts were concerning to her doctors. She was to return in three weeks to have them checked but found herself hospitalized with
During this time, three of her daughters were tested to see if they could be her donor and none of them were the perfect match.