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Haleiwa man
gives thanks
for transplant
The fisherman's family
St. Francis logs 6 liver transplants this year By Helen Altonn
holds a 'born again' party
because a liver saved his life
Star-BulletinKenneth Terukina gets a little frustrated because he tires after working an hour on his backhoe or rowing around nets he lays offshore at Haleiwa to catch akule.
But just a year ago, he didn't think he would be alive today.
A liver transplant one year ago today saved the 60-year-old Haleiwa man's life, prompting his family to hold a "born again celebration" yesterday. Everyone "just wanted to thank God and the donor family for the lovely gift that was given to us," said Terukina's wife, Charline.
"He just can't believe he's alive," said Donna Pacheco, heart and liver transplant coordinator at St. Francis Medical Center's Transplant Institute. "He sits outside every day and watches the sunset and cries."
Terukina has suffered some side effects from medicine but is doing well, she said. "He was so sick before. If you saw him now, you wouldn't know he was the same person."
Terukina owns a 28-foot boat and loves to fish, but since the transplant, has done only shore fishing with friends, Charline said.
There's no physical reason why he can't take his boat out for fishing, Pacheco said. "He's running his backhoe and doing jobs. I look at him and laugh,"Give me a break.'"
A hepatitis C infection related to a blood transfusion in 1969 caused Terukina's liver disease. He was near death when a liver became available. Now, he's walking a couple miles every morning and night: "down the road at Haleiwa Beach Park, all the way to the end and back.
"If I wasn't too busted up from the beginning, I'd probably be 110 percent good already," he said.
Terukina sold his truck, backhoe and other equipment "when I thought I was going bye-bye." But he's so used to working that he bought a new backhoe after surgery.
"I jumped on it. I worked about an hour and (then) I'm looking for shade to crawl under and rest. Your mind says you can work and the body just don't want to go."
But, the man known to all of Haleiwa as "Uncle Kenneth" added: "I still feel young. I expect to live another 20 or 30 years."
The Terukinas don't know who donated his life-saving liver, but thanked the family through the organ donor program.
Two daughters responded, saying there was no question about the organ donation -- that's what their father would have wanted.
The anonymous donor's gift is multiplying through the recipient family.
Terukina has thought about how unselfish it was for a person to donate his organs to a stranger.
He has told his children, "You folks, please, tell your friends, and you become donors, please, because some day your loved ones might be needing life-saving."
The Terukinas met other organ transplant recipients at an Organ Donation Awareness gathering in May at Waialua Public Library, sponsored by the Transplant Association of Hawaii, Halau Na Kamali O Hawaii Nei.
People who had heart, kidney and liver transplants were there, Charline Terukina said. "It really did a lot for him (her husband) to see these people so many years after transplants." She said they talked about the program, the waiting and the donor families. "It was a very emotional thing, but very enlightening and a happy occasion, too, to see the extension of life -- that loss of one life can help save someone else."
Terukina held a big luau May 27 for Charline, who retired after working 30 years at the Waialua Library. "He turned it into an organ donor thing," said Pacheco, who was called upon to speak.
And, at his party yesterday, he said he wouldn't miss an opportunity to tell the celebrants: "Become donors." "If, at least, I can get more people to save a life, I think I did my job," he said. "I feel good about it."
St. Francis
Star-Bulletin staff
logs six liver
transplants this yearSix liver transplants have been done so far this year at St. Francis Medical Center, but 25 people are still waiting for liver donations.
Eight other cases are being examined for listing, said Donna Pacheco, heart and liver transplant coordinator at St. Francis' Transplant Institute.
"We transplant one and list two," she said. "It's an ongoing thing."
Organ donations are increasing, but there are never enough, she said.
"The hardest part for me is to have a patient listed and die waiting -- to know they had a whole option of life and they don't get it," Pacheco said.
For information about organ donations, call the Organ Donor Center of Hawaii at 599-7630.
