Waiting Game Is Over as Fallbrook Woman Undergoes Liver Transplant

For Kim Hughes, the five-month wait for a new liver is over. The 21-year-old Fallbrook woman, who became the subject of an intensive community fund-raising campaign earlier this year, underwent the lifesaving surgery Thursday night at UCLA Medical Center.

The operation began shortly after 5 p.m. and was expected to last at least 16 hours.

However, because she also needs a new pancreas, Hughes may have to continue the waiting game until her body is strong enough to tolerate that transplant. The pancreas will be removed during the liver transplant. Unless it is replaced later, Hughes will be dependent on medication for the rest of her life.

Hughes was diagnosed with cancer in 1986, shortly after graduating from Fallbrook High School. She first went to her doctor complaining of a severe stomachache.

A sonogram revealed a huge mass in her pancreas and a CAT scan confirmed the diagnosis.

‘Unusual Tumor’

“Kim has an unusual tumor arising from her pancreas,” said Dr. Donald Ritt, a gastroenterologist at Scripps Memorial Hospital, one of many local doctors who have treated Hughes. “Its characteristics are it’s very slow-moving and invades locally, but does not spread distantly.”

Ritt said the transplant operation should determine how much damage the tumor has done. The surgeon will also try to remove all of the pancreas, the spleen, and as much as half of Hughes’ stomach before beginning the actual liver transplant, he said.

In January, after Hughes had already undergone chemotherapy and radiation treatments and a bile duct bypass, Dr. Ronald W. Busuttil, director of the UCLA liver transplantation program and a professor of surgery at the UCLA School of Medicine, agreed to perform the time-consuming operation.

Then the waiting began.

Fallbrook residents waited with Hughes, but they were not idle. Led by Hughes’ mother, Sheri, the townspeople began a campaign to raise money for the $230,000 operation. Dozens of events, ranging from bake sales to celebrity tennis tournaments, garnered $103,000.

The average wait of 53 days for a donor organ passed. One hundred days passed.

Got Word in the Morning

Hughes was UCLA’s top candidate for a transplant since Feb. 3. When her phone rang at 6 o’clock Thursday morning, the whole family went into high gear and were on their way to Los Angeles by 8:30 a.m., said Diane Doherty, a neighbor and family friend.

“Kim seemed really excited, a little teary,” Doherty said. “She was in the car ready to go, and she ran back in the house and got a box of Kleenex.

“Kim has waited so long. It’s like it was never really going to happen, and then to have it actually going on, it’s exciting,” Doherty said.

But Hughes remained positive, even as the months ticked off. In an April interview with The Times, Hughes spoke optimistically about the transplant surgery.

“In the very beginning, the UCLA liver transplant program turned me down. For a week I thought a liver transplant was impossible, but I still never believed that that was the definite, that there was just nothing we were going to be able to do.

“I wasn’t willing to accept that nothing was going to be done, and I was just going to die,” Hughes said.

Hughes said her strong faith in God was getting her through the hard times, and ever since she got the call from UCLA agreeing to try the surgery, she believed “everything’s going to work out just fine.”