EAST AURORA, N.Y. — When we talk about life saving organ transplants there are a handful where a person can choose to be a living donor.
You can donate a portion of your liver for example, and never miss it. And that process usually begins when the would-be recipient goes looking for a donor.
It's an unusual request, especially for a Catholic priest.
The Rev. John P. Mack has been living with serious complications of what's called "non-alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver" for about five years. The 66-year-old Catholic priest and theology professor at Christ the King Seminary in East Aurora entered end-stage liver failure this past October and was put on the transplant list at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester.
"I hope I'm still alive when a liver becomes available and I hope I'm healthy enough," Mack said. "because the window of opportunity to get a transplant is limited. You can't be so healthy that they're not gonna do it, and you can't be too sick because then you can't recover."
Mack has spent the past 13 years teaching theology at the seminary, but his first job was as a disc jockey in Olean in the late 1970s before becoming a parish priest.
He also served our country from 1981 until 2009 as a chaplain in the U.S. Air Force Reserve and the New York Air National Guard. He was deployed several times: twice overseas during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Service to others has always been Mack's mission. But advanced liver disease is forcing him now to refocus.
"When I was put on the list, it was both reassuring and a bit frightening," Mack said, "because now it was real. Now it was for real, and now we have to put our mind to what we're gonna do."
Cheryl Calire added, "Part of my job as a 'champion,' I see, is to be there. Whatever he needs."
Calire is one of a dozen of Father Mack's close friends, his self-described "champions" who are rallying around him, to not only offer support and help him find a donor match but to also spread the word about living organ donation.
That sometimes means separating fact from fiction.
"And that's part of the champion's job too," Calire said. "To help educate people so that they understand the difference between donations. And that this is something that the church wholeheartedly supports."
Finding a match for Father Mack is complicated because he has few living relatives. He was an only child, and his parents are now deceased.
Although donors do not have to be a relative, they do need to be relatively healthy, between the ages of 18 and 55, and have Type A or O blood.
And by the way, a donor gives just a portion of their liver. A couple months after the transplant the donor's liver regenerates. Yes, it grows back to normal size!
It is a beautiful life-giving gift from the donor and a life saving gift for Father Mack. It's a prospect he often finds overwhelming.
"I'm going to be a recipient of someone else's generosity?" he mused.
"It's really not easy," he confessed.
"Some days are like ..." before he pauses, choking back tears.
"It's really hard. But ... I have a lot of supportive people around me," he said. "And if I have the opportunity to receive and then live and survive, maybe what I do with these last few years of my life, active life, is to be a witness to that."
For more information about liver donation and how you can help Mack, visit his website here.
You can also contact Jennie Errigo, RN, donor coordinator, at Strong Memorial Hospital (585) 275-5875. Reference Father Mack's full name on the Donor Registry: John P. Mack; date of birth: April 27, 1954.
