A Year After Transplants, Casey Thrives : Pennsylvania: A grateful governor met heart and liver donor’s mother recently. He calls her “incredibly generous.”

A book, a conversation and another man’s death all fell into line to give Gov. Robert P. Casey another chance at life.

A risky chance.

“I don’t take anything for granted anymore,” said Casey, whose disease-ravaged heart and liver were replaced in a rare double-transplant operation a year ago. “When I get up in the morning and the sun’s shining, I feel pretty good.”

The 62-year-old governor, who is concluding two terms in office, underwent surgery June 14, 1993. He returned to office in December.

Casey says he feels much improved though not completely recovered. His doctors at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center say he is doing well. Both organs function, they say; neither has shown signs of rejection for months.

He must take daily medication to prevent rejection.

Casey had amyloidosis, a hereditary condition that was destroying his liver and heart. He thought it was fatal.

But then he received a copy of a memoir by Dr. Thomas Starzl, director of the medical center’s transplant institute. He called Starzl to thank him for the book and asked if the doctor knew anything about amyloidosis.

“He said, ‘I can cure it with a liver transplant,’ ” Casey said. “Up to that point, as far as I knew, no cure, no treatment, always fatal.”

As Casey recalls the days and hours preceding his operation, the swing of emotion he felt at the time remains visible a year later.

Learning that the liver transplant he expected would be accompanied by a heart transplant, Casey was resolute. He got the news while eating cheesecake in a hospital room full of somber doctors.

“I never had a bit--and I mean this--I never had any doubt,” he said. “In light of what they told me, I was dead-ended. So it’s the surgery or the alternative. Let me tell you, the surgery looked pretty darn good.”

Then a compatible heart and lung became available, donated by the family of Michael Lucas, 34, who was fatally beaten in an attack police said was linked to drug dealing.

Casey said he met Lucas’ mother about two months ago in Pittsburgh.

“It was a very emotional thing,” he said. “Here’s a woman who’s lost two sons to violence--one son was shot, the other was beaten to death.

“She regards her son’s life continuing in my life and what I do,” he said. “That, to me, is incredibly generous, when you think of all the circumstances.”