Colorado Springs
Becky Atencio had a passionate, lifelong craving for chocolate. One day, just like that, the obsession was gone. Today she seldom touches the sweet stuff.
“I just don’t like it anymore,” she said.
Art Navalta hardly ever ate chocolate. Maybe a bite from his kids’ Halloween candy each year. Now, Art has a serious daily hankering. “I must,” he said, “have my chocolate.”
Art has Becky’s liver.
Friday night, the social workers for the El Paso County Department of Human Services sat at a table in a coffeehouse in this city where they live. They told a story of courage and sacrifice. Of kindness and friendship.
To help explain the chocolate metamorphosis, let’s meet Mr. Liver.
Located on the right side below the ribs, a healthy human adult liver weighs between 3 and 6 pounds. It’s the largest solid organ in the body. It performs many tasks, including filtering the blood, and produces a basic sugar called glucose.
And the glucose level determines, in no small way, whether or not you will elbow a loved one out of the way to get the last chocolate-covered cherry in the box.
“I just absolutely have to have chocolate,” Navalta said.
“Yup, that’s how I was,” Atencio said.
They laughed.
Today, some 18 months after 67 percent of her liver was cut away and put into Navalta’s body at University Hospital in Denver, both people are doing fine.
Both livers are big and healthy. Because in addition to regulating chocolate addiction, the liver does something else remarkable: it regenerates.
Within weeks after the operations, both Atencio and Navalta had nearly full-size livers. His grew with her glucose level and her love of chocolate. Her liver regrew without it.
“Now I bring him chocolate,” she said. “I tell him, ‘I’ve got to feed my liver.”‘
Navalta, 48, likely came within a few days of death in September 2005. His liver was ravaged by hepatitis B and the resultant cirrhosis normally associated with alcohol abuse. Not in Navalta’s case.
“I drink one beer every summer,” he said.
He was born in the Philippines and like most children there, did not get a hepatitis vaccine. His mother hadn’t, either.
Doctors believe she passed the deadly virus to her baby in the womb. She died of liver failure 20 years ago. Eight years ago, when he was 40, Navalta’s liver began to fail. He got on the national transplant list. (Today there are 17,000 names on the list.)
He kept working. The toll was heavy.
“One day I couldn’t spell even simple words,” said the college-educated Navalta. “I thought it was my computer. I called the tech people to fix it. Then I couldn’t use the phone. Couldn’t punch in seven numbers. I called again and said not only was my computer screwed up but now my phone was screwed up too.”
The disease was affecting his brain.
Navalta, who is married and has two young children, was in the final stages of liver failure.
Lloyd Malone – who was El Paso County human services director and now heads human services in nearby Teller County – sent an e-mail to all county employees about Navalta’s dire situation.
Co-worker Atencio, who barely knew Navalta in the 300-employee department, read it. She kept it on her computer for a while. Then she deleted it.
“I heard that a lot of his friends and relatives had volunteered to donate,” she said. “I figured he didn’t need me.”
He did.
Eight volunteers had been rejected by doctors. Wrong blood type. Too skinny. Too fat. Atencio was just right. In so many ways.
She told her teenage son, Jesse, about Navalta. She said she was going to offer part of her liver and there was a chance she could die as a result. Jesse told her it was a chance to save a life.
“Jesse grew up without a father,” Atencio said. “He didn’t want Art’s two little boys to grow up without their father.”
As the sun dropped behind the mountains on Friday, Navalta and Atencio sat at a table in the coffeehouse.
They smiled at each other.
“People talk about heroes, about people who save another person’s life” said Navalta, his voice quiet as he wrestled with the emotion. “Well, there’s one sitting right there.”
She wiped an eye.
“It was,” she said softly, “just the right thing to do. He needed a donor. I knew it was supposed to be me.”
Staff writer Rich Tosches writes each Wednesday and Sunday. He can be reached at rtosches@denverpost.com.
