PORT ANGELES — Tom Eshom was gathered with family to watch the NFL opener Sept. 5 when he got the phone call that changed his life.
After spending 2½ years on a liver transplant waiting list, the Port Angeles man received a call from the University of Washington Medical Center about an organ match.
“They said we got a liver, and we needed to head to Seattle,” Eshom recalled.
Eshom, 56, and his daughter, Jessica, hightailed it through thunder and lightning to the UW hospital, where Eshom’s charts were waiting for him in the lobby.
“On the way over, we drove right onto the ferry — didn’t even have to shut the car off,” Tom Eshom said.
After breezing through Seattle and the hospital, the Eshoms learned that the donor, a man in his 20s who suffered a traumatic injury, was still on life support.
“They didn’t say if it was a car wreck or work related or anything like that,” Eshom said. “They just said it was an accident.”
The donor died the next day, and Eshom went into a 13-hour surgery that ended Sept. 7.
Eshom’s body accepted the new liver without infection. The organ cured his hemophilia, a genetic clotting disorder.
“He’s still doing really well,” Jessica Eshom said. Everything is stable with him.”
Tom Eshom, who returned to Port Angeles on Oct. 22, said he intends to write to the family members of the donor to express his gratitude and condolences for their loss.
“I know it’s got to take a lot of courage to see a family member pass on and do what they did,” he said.
After the surgery, Eshom and his daughter moved into a University District apartment dedicated to people recovering from organ transplants.
Jessica Eshom, 33, supported her father every step of the way.
She accompanied him through a battery of follow-up procedures and made sure he followed the doctors’ instructions.
“When I did something I wasn’t supposed to, she would scold me about it,” Tom Eshom said.
The senior Eshom added that he would not have received the liver had he not had a reliable caregiver.
“It was a big gift,” he said of his daughter’s support.
“Sometimes it’s hard to put in words. I mean, to me she was a lifesaver.”
Jessica Eshom said her father charmed nurses and kept his sense of humor throughout his recovery, but missed his grandchildren and friends while he was away.
As a Seattle Seahawks fan, Tom Eshom said the timing of the surgery was perfect because he could watch hours of football as he recovered.
“If they’re going to have to do surgery, football season is the time to do it,” he said.
During his recovery, Jessica Eshom designed T-shirts commemorating her father’s transplant.
The shirts depict an organ donor and organ recipient with a shared liver under the words “Living for 2.”
Jessica brought the T-shirts to a welcome home gathering for her father at Laurel Lanes Bowling Center in Port Angeles on Oct. 26.
“Everybody he bowls with was really excited he was back,” she said.
To help with her father’s medical expenses, Jessica Eshom said she set up a Tom Eshom Liver Transplant Fund at Strait View Credit Union at 220 S. Lincoln St., in Port Angeles.
An avid bowler who once rolled a remarkable 289, Tom Eshom said he is eager to return to the lanes.
He hopes his new liver will restore some of the balance that he had lost in recent years.
“Only time will tell there, because I can’t bowl until the first of the year,” he said.
He is also looking forward to testing his new boat motor. A friend covered the boat with a tarp while he was in Seattle.
Tom Eshom’s liver problems began in 1976 when he had a blood transfusion during an appendectomy.
The blood was infected with Hepatitis C, which triggered his liver disease and worsened his diabetes.
“He had started to lose hope,” Jessica Eshom said in an earlier interview.
“He was having trouble with his gall bladder because of the hemophilia.”
“At times he felt very discouraged.”
Tom Eshom said he thought he would die before he got a new liver.
His entire outlook changed when he got the phone call from the hospital.
“I wasn’t nervous beforehand,” he said of going into surgery.
“God’s got his plan for you, and if that was the time that would have been the time.”
Tom Eshom’s wife, D.J. Eshom, died of aggressive lung cancer in August 2010.
He said he felt his wife was “right there” throughout his ordeal.
While her father was in surgery, Jessica Eshom bonded with the family of a patient who received a kidney and pancreas from the same donor.
“It’s life changing,” she said of the transplant.
“We are incredibly grateful.”
In comparing photographs of his old liver with the new liver, Tom Eshom said the difference is “just about night and day.”
“The old liver was real big and it was gray and all discolored,” he said.
“His new liver is half the size,” Jessica Eshom added.
Born and raised in Port Angeles, Tom Eshom took a job with Merrill & Ring shortly after he graduated high school in 1976.
He later worked as a guard at the state prison in Clallam Bay.
He has three adult children — Jessica, Jamie Robinson, 35, and Brandon Eshom, 31 — and a dozen grandchildren and step-grandchildren.
After the experience of the last two months, Jessica Eshom said she will “never look at the world the same.”
“I’ve always been a daddy’s girl,” she added.
“I can honestly say now he’s my best friend. He’s the greatest man I know.”
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5072, or at rollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
