TINLEY PARK, IL — A Tinley Park single mom of two is grasping at what doctors say is her last option to save her own life.
“I am searching for a living donor as the wait list for a liver is years long, and I do not have that time on my side,” said Elizabeth Heaton.
The easiest way for Heaton to describe what’s happening to her, is that it’s what claimed the life of Chicago Bears great Walter Payton. She’s hoping she can get the transplant she so desperately needs, to avoid the same fate. She’s created a website in hopes of finding her match for the transplant, which doctors hope to perform this summer.
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Diagnosed in 2017 with chronic liver disease Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis, she’s fighting a disease in which the liver’s bile ducts become inflamed and scarred, and eventually blocked. After nearly seven years and 15 surgeries, doctors say she’s out of options. A liver transplant is the only thing that can save her life.
“While medicines and surgery can delay the inevitable onslaught of the disease,” Heaton, 35, wrote in a public plea to find a donor, “there is no known cure. When medicine and surgery have done all they can, liver transplantation is the only choice to stay alive.”
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Heaton was 30 years old and had just birthed her son, when lab results during a post-partum checkup revealed abnormally high liver enzyme counts. A visit to her primary care doctor confirmed the same.
She made big changes to her diet—making sure it was low-salt—but still, the counts hovered high, and higher.
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“No matter what, my liver enzymes kept getting higher,” Heaton told Patch.
Heaton, who grew up in Tinley Park and is an alum of Victor J. Andrew High School, has always led a healthy lifestyle. She’s an avid runner, and also a Peloton user. She and her children—6-year-old Noah and 9-year-old Leah—love spending time outdoors. Noah plays hockey, and for Leah it’s basketball. The family is always on the move, Heaton a very active “sports mom.” Noah is autistic, Heaton said, and thrives when he stays physically active.
“No matter what I did health-wise, my liver would never cooperate,” Heaton said.
At the end of 2017, she suffered a gallbladder attack. From there, it spiraled into the PSC diganosis and a flurry of treatments and surgeries. She was told she should draw up a will and decide who would care for her children, should she not survive.
“At the time, when I was 30, that’s nothing they teach you to do in life,” Heaton said. “It has been exhausting being the sole person in charge of my kids. They’re with me 24/7. The thought of my kids not having me is terrifying, and something I’ve been working on in therapy.”
More than a dozen times, surgeons placed stents to try to fight the inflammation and scarring happening in the liver’s bile ducts.
Until they couldn’t do it another time.
At Christmastime 2023, Heaton fell ill, and it became clear to doctors that they had exhausted all options.
“‘We’re putting a Band-aid on things,'” she said doctors told her. “‘We can’t keep doing this to you.
“‘We need to get you a liver, so your body can recover.'”
As a prospective recipient who is on the healthier side than others on the transplant list, a living donor is a better option for Heaton.
“The chance of recovery for me, and the donor, is higher,” Heaton said.
A match for donating to Heaton must meet three basic criteria, to start:
A living donor questionnaire is available online through University of Chicago Medicine. You’ll need her name (Elizabeth Heaton) and birthday—March 13, 1988—when completing the form.
“The biggest thing with the questionnaire is that it asks for my name and my birthdate,” Heaton said. “That’s the biggest piece, so that the donor gets matched with me. The donor process is completely confidential to me. I don’t find out if there’s a donor, unless the donor okays me to be notified.
“They could go through the whole donor process, and I would never know who they are.”
Anyone with questions about the process can contact Heaton at (734)291-2485.
Medication she’s on now is pain management, rather than a course of treatment. Heaton realizes time is of the essence, and she’s stared down the possibility that her outcome might be grim.
“Even going into the transplant process, I’ve had to make peace with the fact that I might not wake up, something could go wrong,” Heaton said.
“I have a huge support system here in Tinley Park. I come from a big family, so God forbid something goes wrong, it’s all hands on deck.
“It’s pretty much life or death, and it gives me chills to think about it. There’s nothing left.”
Find more information and Elizabeth, her diagnosis, and becoming a living liver donor here.
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