Athletes to Compete in Pittsburgh

By Janice Lane Palko

When you think of athletes, you think of muscles, feats of strength and endurance—not four-year-old little girls. Yet Janna Wagner is truly a champion and has withstood challenges in her young life that boggle the mind. Janna, the daughter of Scott, a graduate of Taylor Allderdice and the University of Pittsburgh, and Tammy Wagner, of Wichita, Kansas, is coming to Pittsburgh to compete in the U.S. Transplant Games sponsored by the National Kidney Foundation.

Janna was born on January 15, 2004, and by the time she was six-weeks old, Tammy knew something was wrong with her baby. “I had that motherly instinct,” said Tammy, who at the time, also had a two-year old daughter, Malina. “Janna wasn’t sleeping, and her stools were oddly colored.”

After a series of tests, Janna was diagnosed with biliary atresia, a disease of the liver and bile ducts. She underwent Kasai surgery, a procedure which removes the diseased bile duct and replaces it with a piece of the baby’s own intestine, allowing bile to pass from the liver into the intestine. “Basically, they re-plumbed her liver,” Scott said. The surgery was not a cure, and after her health started to deteriorate. It seemed that she would need a liver transplant.

Since Wichita did not have a transplant center, she was referred to a hospital in Omaha, Nebraska, more than five hours away from home. After a thorough exam and battery of tests, her case was brought before a transplant approval committee. “We were told the decision to put Janna on the list came after the shortest discussion their committee ever had,” Tammy said. They immediately added her to the list because she was very ill, but otherwise an excellent transplant candidate.

After a relatively short six weeks on the transplant list, the Wagners received an evening call telling them that there was a liver for Janna. They drove through the night to Omaha, and Janna, at 19 months old, received a new liver on August 8, 2005.

“The thought of handing her off to a surgeon and not knowing if you would ever see her big brown eyes again made us pretty emotional,” Tammy said. Later they learned she received the liver of a nine-month old baby boy.

Janna responded remarkably well to the transplant and was out of the hospital within six days, though Tammy remained in Omaha with Janna for the six-week recovery period while Scott tended to things at home. Janna now takes an anti-rejection drug and goes back to Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha once a year for a check-up.

This past year, she entered preschool, and at the transplant games, she will compete in swimming, 50-meter dash and bowling. “She’s a first time Olympian so she really doesn’t know what to expect,” Scott said. “She may be overwhelmed, but no matter what she’s a champion. For that matter, I think we’ll all be overwhelmed. Her sister is really pumped about it though.”

More than 7,000 athletes, transplant recipients, living donors, donor families, transplant professionals, friends, families and spectators are expected to attend the games, which take place July 11-16 at various venues throughout the area.

Janna will be competing with Team Mo-Kan (Missouri-Kansas). Several North Hills residents will be taking part as well. Becky Ridgeway, Marshall Twp., a heart transplant recipient, whom Northern Connection featured in an article in February 2007, will be competing in her fifth transplant games for Team Pittsburgh, the first in Pittsburgh.

“The first year that I attended the games, I think I cried with joy and gratitude about half the time. I was so moved to see the transplant recipients of all ages putting forth their best efforts in their sports. Some are tremendous athletes, while many are normal folks who just happen to have had a transplant. What they all share is the joy of being alive and the desire to promote organ donation,” Ridgeway said.

Terry Starrett, Wexford, received a kidney transplant in 2001, after suffering with polycystic kidney disease. She will be participating in her third Olympics, competing in running, swimming and bowling events. Her training has been set back some as she broke her wrist in April. “The games make a strong statement. Look what we can do. We’ve had a second chance at life,” Starrett said.

For more information on the U.S. Transplant games, visit the web site at www.transplantgames.org.

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