Gravely ill doctor left waiting for new liver
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
By BOB IVRY
STAFF WRITER
Dr. Michael Harris remembers the moment that changed his life - the moment he was infected with hepatitis C.
It was February 1986. He drew blood from a patient and looked around for one of those plastic medical waste boxes where he could throw away the needle. He couldn't find one in the hospital room. He went to another room, then another. No medical waste containers. So he tried to put the cap back on the needle.
And pricked his finger.
"Klutz that I am," Harris said.
The patient had hepatitis C, a virus that attacks the liver. Harris became infected.
For 19 years, Harris and his family kept his illness a secret. Harris, chief of pediatric oncology and director of the Tomorrows Children's Institute at Hackensack University Medical Center, said he made sure his patients were never in any danger.
Besides, there was nothing that could be done about the hepatitis C. It's incurable.
Harris, 61, can't keep it a secret any longer.
He's facing liver failure. He's on a waiting list for a liver transplant.
"It's been hell," said Freida Harris, his wife of 36 years.
The liver produces proteins that clot blood and regulate the fluid in the body. It filters toxins from the blood and metabolizes medications. Without a functioning liver, we die.
Today, 17,341 patients nationwide await a new liver; 197 live in New Jersey. Five years is the median waiting time, according to Annie Moore of the United Network for Organ Sharing.
"There are deaths on the waiting list every day," Moore said. Last year, she said, 1,781 patients died waiting for a liver transplant.
Donors don't have to be dead because the liver is the only organ able to regenerate. After transplant, a piece of a liver from a living donor can become a functioning organ. The practice is rare, however - only 323 liver transplants last year out of 6,169 were from living donors. New York state, where Harris is registered as a prospective liver recipient through the hospital where he's being treated, allows living donations only from the patient's family.
Freida Harris said she would be willing to donate. "I don't want to live without him," she said.
But doctors have said her husband's case is so severe he needs a liver from a younger donor. The Harrises have four adult children. Their two daughters are smaller than their father, so they wouldn't make good transplant candidates either. As for her sons, Freida said, "It would be very traumatic to put two people in a family at risk. I'm not sure I could take two people in the family going through that."
So he's waiting for someone with Type A blood to die.
One of Harris' friends, Dr. Joel Budin, urged him to go public with his infection in hopes it would increase his chances of getting a donor match.
"He was reluctant to do that," says Budin, a radiologist at the Hackensack hospital. "He's a very dedicated physician, really loved by his patients. He's had a very positive outlook, a very optimistic person. I've been amazed, seeing the problems he has to deal with, that he's maintained this optimistic attitude. It's a great service to his patients."
None of those patients knew Harris was infected with hepatitis C. That wasn't an issue with Hackensack University Medical Center, he said, which hired him knowing about the illness.
"Direct blood contact is the only way to get hepatitis C," Harris said.
Despite the infection, Harris kept a full calendar for years. He stopped seeing patients in March, he said, only when his fatigue got so bad he could hardly get out of bed. It's not walking his daughter down the aisle or seeing his son graduate from college that Harris lists as reasons to get better. It's his patients.
"His work is his passion," Freida Harris said. "He loves us, but he says he wants to get better so he can treat his patients. There's no downtime for him. He's always doing as much as he can."
In the spacious living room of their Englewood home Monday, the Harrises fielded phone call after phone call. The irony of a widely respected healer now seeking healing wasn't lost on the many well-wishers.
"I appreciate the outpouring of interest," Harris said.
Freida took a call while Michael sat back on the couch and detailed his recent turn for the worse. He has been hospitalized twice since February. He constantly feels nauseous and tired. At 6 feet 4 inches, he once weighed 185. Now he weighs 168. His skin is sallow and his eyelids are heavy.
An estimated 4 million to 5 million Americans have hepatitis C. Even a liver transplant, in 80 percent of the cases, won't get rid of the infection, though the disease doesn't seem to greatly damage the new liver in the majority of cases. The transplant success rate for hepatitis C sufferers is only slightly lower than for the rest of the population.
"After five years, the patient survival rate is close to 70 percent," said Baburao Koneru, chief of transplant surgery at University Hospital in Newark. "For liver transplant patients who don't have hepatitis C, the rate is about 10 to 15 percent higher."
As a doctor who treats children with cancer, Harris said, he has seen his share of tragedy.
"So I know what tragedy can do to a family. For me to have to wait for that tragedy in order to survive .... " Harris' voice trailed off. He cleared his throat. "I feel some ambivalence."
Then Freida came and hooked her arm under his, to help him up. The doctor had another phone call.
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LIFESAVER: Dr. Michael Harris, with wife Freida yesterday, has saved countless children in a selfless career. He contracted deadly hepatitis C while drawing blood from one of his cancer patients.
Photo: Don Murray
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May 24, 2005 -- A selfless doctor who has devoted himself to saving the lives of young cancer patients now needs help to save his own life.
Dr. Michael Harris is dying of hepatitis C — a disease he contracted 20 years ago when he pricked himself with a needle while he was drawing blood from a patient stricken with the deadly viral disease.
After growing weaker and weaker through the years, Harris, 61, now needs a liver transplant to survive.
His wife, his four kids, his friends and associates, even the parents of former patients have all volunteered to be live donors — but he's turned them all down.
"I don't want to put another person at risk," Harris said yesterday during an interview in the living room of his Englewood home.
"It's not like giving your kidney, which is much easier," he said.
"Typical," said Dr. David Cohain, a Fort Lee dentist whose 15-year-old daughter, Naomi, was treated by Harris 10 years ago.
"He's totally selfless . . . He's more of an angel than he is a human," said Cohain, whose cancer-stricken daughter died after six months in Harris' loving care.
"I'd give him my whole liver if I could."
Harris is chief of pediatric oncology at Hackensack University Medical Center, where he heads the Tomorrows Children's Institute for Cancer and Blood Disorders. But he's been too ill to spend much time at work in recent months.
"It's been a struggle," he admitted.
He recalled the mishap that changed his life in 1986 when he was working at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan.
He had just drawn blood from a boy with hepatitis C and was trying to find a cap to put on the needle, so no one would come in contact with it, when he pricked his finger.
Two months later, he felt the first symptoms — "I was just exhausted," he said.
Two years passed before he learned he definitely had the virus.
"I had a very severe case," he said.
He was put on the first of a series of interferon medications, "but it was clear that my liver was deteriorating."
By 2004, he had very little normal liver function left.
This past February, his condition worsened and he had to be hospitalized.
The same thing happened again in April.
Between his two hospital stays — Harris won't say where — he was put on the New York state transplant list to get the liver of a cadaver with a compatible blood type.
But the list is a long one, and Harris doesn't hold out much hope that he'll move up the list quickly enough to save his life.
"Every day I feel myself getting weaker," he confided.
"I'm not near death, but the sooner the better. The sicker you get, the more difficult it is to tolerate a transplant."
There are other options, he noted.
The one he prefers is getting a transplant from a direct donor — which means receiving the liver of a recently deceased person that has been donated by the family.
But even that disturbs Harris.
"I find it difficult to have to wait for someone's tragedy because I've seen so much tragedy myself," he explained.
Harris still goes to work, but no longer puts in a full day.
"I don't see any new patients. Fortunately I have a great staff of physicians," he said.
His wife, Freida, said she helped keep his illness a secret for 18 years.
"We didn't tell anyone," she said. "We didn't want to make anybody sad . . . he didn't want that."
She was the first to offer her liver for a transplant, according to their son, Jonathan, 28.
"After he turned my mother down, we knew he would turn his children down, and anyone else down," Jonathan Harris noted. "It's a risky operation, and he doesn't want to put anyone at risk.
"I would give him my liver in a second, but he wouldn't accept it," said Jonathan, who works at Black Rock Financial Management in Manhattan.
He said his older sisters, Miera and Aimee, and younger brother, Aaron, also would be willing donors.
He described his father as "one of the strongest, hardest-working people I know. He's a saint. He's given his life to helping children."
"You'd be amazed at how many people come up to me and say my father is the best or the nicest person they ever met."
"We're all praying," he said.
Frieda Harris is praying, too — but she's also fuming.
"My husband is a physician, and he got [hepatitis] in the line of fire, and he doesn't go to the top of the list," she said.
Dr. Harris seems more accepting and optimistic.
Asked what keeps him hopeful, he said: "I think of the children who have survived. I realize they had adversity and courage. They've shown me how to face what I have."
http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/47093.htm
HAIL 'SAINT' WHO HEALED THEM
By LEONARD GREENE and MARSHA KRANES
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HEALER: Michael Harris in 2003 with ex-patient Mallory Garvin at the Jersey hospital.
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May 24, 2005 -- To his patients, Dr. Michael Harris is "a saint," "an angel," "a second father."
"I probably owe him just about everything I have," said Mallory Garvin of Wood Ridge, N.J., who first went to see Harris when she was diagnosed with leukemia as a 4-year-old.
After getting her through her first bout with cancer, he treated her a second time when she was 12 and had a tumor on her tongue.
Now 18 and just finished with her freshman year at Purdue University, Mallory said she cried when she learned that the man who "helped me survive something so traumatic" faces death unless he has a liver transplant.
"It just isn't fair. He doesn't deserve that. He's such a good guy," she said. "He's like a family member to me, like a second father almost. I love him dearly."
"We're extremely close. He's very, very gentle. He's very easy to talk to. He cracks jokes when you need a laugh," she said.
Her parents were so grateful to him, she said, they named her brother after him — Zachary Harris Garvin.
Her mother recalled how Harris "sat us down as a family and told us" that Mallory had leukemia.
"He has a very calming influence. I don't know anyone who has that amount of heart and warmth. He has really given his life for these kids," said Kendal Garvin.
"My heart was broken when I heard he was suffering. It seems so unfair," she said.
Elizabeth "Zibby" Scrivani met Harris six years ago, when she was 12 and diagnosed with leukemia.
"He was not actually my doctor, but every time he saw me he knew what was going on with me, he asked how I was doing, how school was going, if I had a boyfriend, and I always got a big hug from him," said Zibby, a senior at Leonia HS.
"He was always smiling, always upbeat," she said. "I knew even though he wasn't my main doctor that he always worried about me."
Her mother, Ena, who's a nurse, said she was impressed with the way Harris ran his clinic, Tomorrows Children's Institute for Cancer and Blood Disorders at Hackensack University Medical Center.
"His caring just filtered right down through the staff to the patients and their families," she said. "He knew every patient, even if he wasn't their primary physician."
"He established a rapport with each patient and each family."
She said she last saw Harris on May 11 when he held his annual celebration for ex-patients graduating from high school.
He was there despite his serious illness, she said.
"He came and it was all about the kids," she noted. "He was telling them that they are his heroes. There was nothing about himself."
"He's such a humble man, it's never about himself. It's always about the kids," she said.
"That's what makes him so special. Believe me, I've been in the profession for 32 years, and it's refreshing to know that there are people out there who truly care."
Dr. David Cohain, a Fort Lee dentist, agrees.
"He's totally selfless. He's not worried about his own ego. I've never met a purer person in my life," said Cohain, who met Harris 10 years ago when he treated his 15-year-old daughter, Naomi.
"For six months, he tried to save my daughter, but he couldn't.
"They offered her the best treatment . . . and they also helped her through it."
Cohain said he was impressed with the teamwork he saw at the clinic.
"The whole place works together. You always feel like everyone's in communication with each other.
He described Harris as "a brilliant man" who "doesn't like anyone singing his praises.
"I don't know a person in the world like him," he said.
"The kind of comfort he gave me daughter, that kind of warmth and understanding — you never forget that."
http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/47097.htm
New York Daily News -
http://www.nydailynews.com
Doc's in fight of his life
BY ADAM NICHOLS
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Tuesday, May 24th, 2005
Cancer specialist Dr. Michael Harris has spent his career saving young lives.
But, as hepatitis C destroys his liver, he's desperately searching for somebody to save his.
The chief of Pediatric Oncology at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey contracted the disease after spiking himself with a needle nine years ago. A liver transplant is his only chance at survival.
"I just live and hope that somebody will donate their liver, but it is very difficult," said Harris, 61, who is on the donor waiting list.
"I deal with tragedy all the time. I see what a tragic event can do to a family, and to have to wait for a family to be in that position before I can recover is very, very difficult.
"I don't want something bad to happen to somebody else. If it does, and their family is willing to donate their liver, I hope that I would make them proud, that I live on to help other people."
Harris, a married father of four, still works three to five hours a day, despite suffering from extreme fatigue. He is now unable to treat patients but carries out administrative tasks and is director of the famed Tomorrow's Children's Institute for Cancer and Blood Disorders.
He does not know how long he has left to find a donor.
"I remember one of my patients, a 15-year-old girl I spent a very intense time with," he said. "She knew she was going to die and she asked if there was anything she could give to help other people?
"I told her for cancer patients, all they can leave are their corneas. She smiled and said it gave her so much pleasure to know someone else will see the beauty of this life through her eyes.
"If I can bring awareness of organ donation to people, that would be wonderful, even if I don't get an organ."
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/v-pfriendly/story/312578p-267378c.html
