Juan “John” LaSalle is a man who believes in miracles: he is on his second life and he has new faith and a new liver.

“We’ve seen a lot of things that we wouldn’t have called miracles before — but now we do,” said his wife, Amie LaSalle. “We’ve learned that when we sit back and let God do the driving, we just enjoy the view.”

About hepatitis

• The word “hepatitis” means inflammation of the liver. It also refers to a group of viral infections that affect the liver.

• The most common types are hepatitis A, hepatitis B, and hepatitis C.

• Viral hepatitis is the leading cause of liver cancer and the most common reason for liver transplantation.

• In the United States, an estimated 1.2 million Americans are living with chronic hepatitis B and 3.2 million are living with chronic hepatitis C. Many do not know they are infected.

• Each year an estimated 25,000 people become infected with hepatitis A; 43,000 with hepatitis B, and 17,000 with hepatitis C.

• Cirrhosis caused by hepatitis C is the most common reason for a liver transplant.

Sources: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Liver Foundation.

Until July 20, when he got a call from a Memphis hospital, his health declined day by day.

John was not alone in waiting. More than 106,000 candidates were on organ transplant waiting lists last week, according to OrganDonor.gov, a U.S. government Web site with information about access, risks, research and legislation on the topic. He was one of 28,464 people receiving a transplant in 2009.

“We were on the list for two months,” said John. “The doctor said, ‘It was lucky you got that transplant because you wouldn’t have lived another month.’”

The LaSalles don’t know anything about the person whose donation gave John his life back. They do not even know if the person was a man or woman — so they call the donor “Angel,” which in Spanish can be a male or female name.

John LaSalle, 49, was diagnosed in January 2009 with life-threatening liver damage. He woke up one morning not feeling well but went to his job as a painter for Circle S, a New Hebron-based contractor doing business with Ergon at E.W. Haining Industrial Park. During the day he noticed his legs were swollen, and had a co-worker drive him to the emergency room at River Region.

John had always been active and never seriously ill, but soon found himself lying in a hospital bed. After a week of tests at River Region, he was told he has hepatitis C, an incurable viral infection that causes inflammation and often permanent scarring or cirrhosis of the liver. Many people who have the disease — like John — have no symptoms.

“There’s no telling how long he had it,” said Amie, 35, activities director and social services assistant at Vicksburg Convalescent Home.

His Vicksburg doctors sent John to Methodist University Hospital in Memphis, where he underwent extensive testing and was assigned a place on an organ-donor wait list. Both John and Amie also attended training at Methodist to help them understand the emotional and financial demands of a transplant, and then came home to wait.

John couldn’t work or even do much around the house or yard.

“With liver failure, you get a lot of confusion,” Amie said. “There’s a lot of swelling, there’s pain. He was very grumpy.” His brothers would come over, mow the lawn and help with other big chores, but something was missing.

“During this process we decided we didn’t have any other place to turn but our faith,” John said.

The family began attending Living Waters Fellowship, a small church on Culkin Road not far from the couple’s Boy Scout Road home. Church members embraced the LaSalles, supporting them in prayer and fellowship, with fundraisers, hospital visits and other acts of caring. Many were among more than 100 blood donors at a June 27 drive John and Amie set up with Lifeblood, a mid-South regional blood bank.

“When people like John and Amie allow us to come to where they are to collect blood on their behalf, it’s really a blessing because it helps us ensure we have the blood on hand when they come in,” said Lifeblood’s Lorie Nowlin. “So many friends and family showed up to support him, it’s a testament to the kind of person he is.”

John was born in Brooklyn, the son of Puerto Rican parents who took their family back to the U.S. island territory when he was about 10. He went to school there, then joined the Army National Guard in 1979, serving in the infantry and military police. In 1997, he moved to Vicksburg, where his brother David was a member of the Vicksburg Police Department.

He and Amie met shortly after, introduced by friends, and have been married 12 years. They “share” six children. John has four by a previous marriage — a son, 25, and daughter, 20, in New York, and a son, 24, and daughter, 19, in Puerto Rico. Amie has a 13-year-old daughter, Chelsea, whom John adopted, and the couple also has a 10-year-old daughter, Madison.

Wait time for a liver transplant depends on a number of factors, but can range up to many months.

“Around 8:30 one night the phone rang,” Amie said. “I thought it was a wrong number and hung up on them. Then I realized I saw a 901 number” — 901 is the area code for Memphis — “and I called them back. Here we had been praying and praying, the people at our church had been praying, and the woman on the phone said they had a liver for him. ‘There’s no other match for this liver but your husband,’ she said.”

Amie got so excited, she “ran around the living room about 15 times,” she said. “I felt like an expectant father, yelling, ‘we gotta get the bag packed; we gotta get the bag packed.”

They left for Memphis a few minutes later, and were in such a state neither remembers anything about the drive. The surgery took place early the next morning.

Four hours after the operation, John was sitting up in bed, and the next day he was up and dressed and able to sit in a chair.

Three days after, a man came into John’s hospital room saying, “I’m here to do physical therapy,” he said. “Where’s the patient?”

“You just passed him in the hall,” Amie told him. John had rallied other transplant patients at the hospital and organized a little group, getting people up and walking around.

Once discharged from the hospital, he made weekly trips back to Methodist for a while, then monthly.

A liver transplant can cost $500,000. John has health coverage through his employer, but the family also faced — and will always face — significant expenses, including anti-rejection and other medications that can cost $2,000 to $5,000 a month.

He’s unsure when he’ll be healthy enough to go back to work, and is grateful to Circle S for paying his COBRA — continuation of medical insurance — costs.

In the meantime, doctors have told him to avoid the green tea he used to love — it interferes with his medication — and not eat a lot of fried foods, hot dogs and other fast foods.

“He still has a long way to go,” Amie said. “There are times he just can’t do things. He gets very tired.”

Doctors tell him he’ll soon be recovered enough to begin interferon treatments for the hepatitis.

People ask him if he feels different.

“Not really, but I crave cheese pizza now,” he said.

In other ways, though, John is different. Amie is, too.

“I still tear up, talking about it,” she said. “It was the most awesome experience. It was …”

“It changes your life,” John said simply.

“We really do say that the whole experience was by the grace of God,” Amie said.

“It’s the power of prayer,” said John, “Our faith got us through this. It got us to the right place.”

•

Contact Pamela Hitchins at phitchins@vicksburgpost.com