By Anne Levin
Barbara Gerrity
When Barbara Gerrity retired in 2021 from her longtime job at the Philadelphia accounting firm KPMG, she planned to spend her time traveling and relaxing with her husband. Instead, she has taken on another fulltime job — saving her own life.
The 62-year-old Mercerville resident, who has also worked in Princeton and Rocky Hill, has liver disease. She needs a liver transplant in order to survive.
Gerrity spends her days searching for a donor, through every kind of communication she can find — church bulletins, lawn signs, emails, visiting private businesses, and transplant registries (the United Network for Organ Sharing and the National Kidney Registry), as well as her own website.
“I’m trying to get the word out. I’m told it takes time. They don’t give you a time frame,” she said. “It makes me nervous that it’s summer now, and people can be away on vacation. It could be by Christmas, or by Easter. I don’t know when. But whatever day it is, that’s the day it is. A transplant team at the Penn Liver Transplant Program in Philadelphia is ready to go.”
Diagnosed with fatty liver disease, which can be linked to a poor diet, Gerrity was told by doctors at first that her enzymes were elevated but it was not a major concern. On future visits for blood tests, the enzymes would be normal. But she didn’t feel right. “I was always tired and my ankles would swell, but everyone would say it was because I was commuting and working long hours,” she said.
Eventually, Gerrity’s gastroenterologist noticed some concerning levels in her blood tests. He suggested she consult the Penn Medicine Liver Transplant team.
“They said I’d probably had this for 20-some years,” she said. “I also had a gene from one of my parents that was working against me, which made me store too much iron in my liver. A lot of people have fatty livers, but it doesn’t mean they’re going to get what I have.”
In March, Gerrity was advised to start looking for a donor. She can accept a liver from a deceased or living donor, who would provide her with a portion of the organ. The donor’s own liver would regenerate.
The surgery for a donor and Gerrity would take place on the same day and time. The donor would recover in the hospital for around five days and continue to heal at home for several weeks. Gerrity’s own recovery would be more complicated.
So who would volunteer for this kind of operation? “They say at Penn that you’d be surprised,” Gerrity said. “You don’t realize how many people are willing to do this. It’s nice to know that. I don’t think I’d really want to know them, but we’d probably meet because we’d be in the hospital at the same time.”
The longer it takes to find a donor, the more serious Gerrity’s condition becomes. “I have some of the early symptoms. I have some jaundice, and my muscles have gotten weaker,” she said. “I’m tired a lot of the time. And I know it’s not going to get any better.”
Looking back, Gerrity wishes she had been more proactive in investigating her condition. “They didn’t make a big deal about it, so I just went along with what they said. But I wish I had asked more questions,” she said. “I wish I had been better about eating fast food, and read labels on food I was buying. You have to be your own advocate.”
Gerrity remains hopeful that a donor will be found. “It only takes one person,” she said. “And while I look for one, I am an advocate and a spokesperson.”
For more information about being a donor for Gerrity, visit nkr.org/ZDD358.
