​​​Nuria Martinez-Keel

Many college students dream of something bigger than being normal, but most of them haven’t gone through three livers or turned completely yellow. For one student at Oklahoma State University, being ordinary is ideal.

     

Hannah Vandemotter, a sophomore marketing and management major, got a cake and a party Saturday, and, no, it wasn’t her birthday. She and a group of friends were celebrating the 2-year anniversary of her second liver transplant. Vandemotter called it her “liverversary.”

     

“It’s a big milestone especially since the first time around (the liver) didn’t make it to two years,” she said.

 

Vandemotter, 20, is a healthy student-athlete from Cypress, Texas, starting at forward for the OSU women’s club soccer team. Despite her medical history, she can run, train and play the game like the rest of her teammates. It wasn’t so long ago, though, that she was too sick to even go for a walk.

 

Vandemotter discovered she had liver disease her junior year of high school in 2012. She injured her foot at a soccer tournament and went to the doctor for a check-up. She was at the appointment with her mom when her doctor found something unexpected.

 

By pressing on her torso, the doctor could feel that her spleen was enlarged. He pricked her finger and left the room to run blood tests. Then, he came back almost frantic, Vandemotter said. He told them she needed to go to the hospital right away for liver treatment.

 

She and her parents, Trisha and Chris Vandemotter, were suddenly caught up in a frenzy of blood tests and doctor’s referrals. None of them understood how all of it could be happening to a teenager with no history of medical problems.

 

“Growing up, Hannah was hardly ever sick,” Trisha said. “She was required to have an annual physical to compete in school sports. Nothing was ever found to be abnormal.”

 

Vandemotter went to Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston where doctors did a biopsy on her liver. They told her the best case scenario, depending on the results of the biopsy, would be taking medication for the rest of her life. The worst case was having liver disease so severe she would need a transplant.

 

When the results came in, the worst case scenario became Vandemotter’s new reality. Her doctors immediately put her on the liver transplant list. They told her to expect about a yearlong wait until one would be available.

 

Vandemotter didn’t feel sick from the liver disease, but her spleen was still enlarged. Playing sports could have caused the spleen to rupture, so she had to quit soccer. She spent the rest of her junior year at Cypress Ranch High School on the sidelines.

 

Vandemotter wasn’t about to give up on her team, though. Most of her friends were her teammates, and she couldn’t stay away from her favorite sport completely. She stuck with the team to give support at practice, hoping that she could join her friends on the field again some day.

 

It was fitting, then, that four months later Vandemotter was with her teammates after soccer practice when her mom gave her the news she didn’t yet expect to hear. A liver was ready, and it was her turn to get a transplant.

 

“My mom texted me and was like, ‘You got the call,’” Vandemotter said. “I raced home, and all my friends followed me, so there was 10 of us that showed up at my house.”

 

Vandemotter and her parents drove to Texas Children’s that night and prepared for the transplant. The wait was almost over. Her parents and teammates surrounded her the next day until she went in for surgery.

 

This operation was Vandemotter’s only shot at having a normal life again. Her battle with liver disease was supposed to end with the transplant. She went in to surgery, and the doctors successfully performed the operation.

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Then the real trouble began.

 

Vandemotter’s body rejected the liver. The transplant wasn’t filtering and draining as a healthy liver should. She was at home for only 15 days before she had to go back to the hospital again.

 

Not all organ transplants function well in a new body. Transplant recipients help the adjustment by taking immunosupressant medications, which prevent their immune systems from attacking the new organs. Sometimes, even that’s not enough to get a transplant and a patient’s body to cooperate.

 

Doctors tried to change Vandemotter’s medicine. They even removed her spleen, but still nothing was helping her condition. She was in and out of the hospital every other week for the next year as more complications from the transplant came up. Her father, Chris, called that time “a living hell.”

 

“It was like getting a new car and all the wheels were flat and you could not patch the holes,” Chris said.

 

Vandemotter sometimes laughed at herself despite her frustration from the hospital stays. One week, her whole body turned yellow from liver failure. She underwent liver dialysis, which turned her coloring back to normal, but in the meantime, she decided to make light of her situation. She joked about being a minion like the yellow characters in the movie “Despicable Me.”

 

Vandemotter didn’t let her medical problems stop her from keeping her spirits up, and they didn't prevent her from finishing her final year of high school, either.

 

She had to miss two months of school after getting her spleen removed, so she worked with her teachers to stay on track to graduate. Some of them came to her house to give her private tutoring to help her keep up.

 

Once the school year came to an end, Vandemotter graduated on time with the class of 2013, and she prepared to go to Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas.

 

Her liver function and overall health were still weak, but doctors cleared her to go to college. Vandemotter had gotten used to her poor condition by that time, and she wasn’t about to let her illness overcome her excitement to start freshman year. 

 

She moved to San Marcos with some of her high school friends, who also attended the university, and she tried to enjoy her first week as much as she was able. Her friends wanted to do activities and check out the campus. All Vandemotter could do was lay in bed. Just walking to find the buildings on her class schedule was too much for her to handle.

 

Her condition continued to deteriorate once classes started. She constantly felt sick and weak, and the side effects of her transplant rejection were becoming more serious.

 

After her second day of classes, she woke up in the middle of the night imagining someone had broken into her room and was coming to take her. She screamed and cried while her roommate, a friend from high school who knew about her condition, tried to convince her everything was all right.

 

Vandemotter finally went back to sleep, but the next day was even worse. She knew something was wrong when she woke up vomiting and feeling sicker than usual. She called her best friend Brianna, who also attended Texas State, and asked for a ride to the hospital. Brianna told her to stay in her room until she got there.

 

At that point, Vandemotter’s liver was on the brink of shutting down. It affected her whole body and unexpectedly caused her brain to swell. She started hallucinating. When Brianna got to her room, Vandemotter was gone.

 

“She walked down to my dorm room, and I wasn’t there, so she went looking for me,” Vandemotter said. “She found me walking around with a light bulb and a heating pad in my hand.”

 

Brianna put Vandemotter in her car and drove around San Marcos searching for the hospital. Every five minutes she had to stop to let Vandemotter throw up by the side of the road.

 

Once they finally arrived at the emergency room, doctors got in contact with Vandemotter’s physicians at Texas Children’s. They agreed the best plan of action was to bring her back to Houston from San Marcos. Hospital staff put Vandemotter in an ambulance for the three-hour drive.

 

Upon arriving at Texas Children’s, Vandemotter went straight into intensive care. Her doctors evaluated her condition and knew this was the final straw. They had to find her another liver, or she was going to die.

 

Her name went to the top of the liver transplant list. Doctors put her in a medically induced coma to give her body time to rest and heal. She slept as they searched to find a matching liver. They looked through possible liver donations but had to rule most of them out. One liver was too big for Vandemotter’s body. Another was from a donor who had mononucleosis, making it unviable. One came from someone with a possible history of drug use.

 

Her physicians and parents sorted through about 10 offers until they found the one that matched perfectly. Her doctors woke her up from her coma before they prepared for the surgery.

 

“All I remember was they (said), ‘Are you ready?’ and I was like, ‘Please just take me down there,’” Vandemotter said. “I was hurting so bad.”

 

The second transplant surgery did not go as smoothly as the first. Vandemotter was losing too much blood during the operation. Her surgeon wasn’t sure if she was going to make it through.

 

The surgery coordinators and the attending doctor called her parents into a small room off of the hospital waiting area. They told Trisha and Chris that the situation was not looking good.

 

“I remember being numb and thinking, ‘Well this isn’t the end for her. She has been through so much. This is not how she is going to go,’” Trisha said.        

 

The medical team persisted, and Vandemotter survived the surgery. She woke up a few hours later with yet another liver.           

 

Recovery for the second transplant lasted much longer than the first, but the signs for a full recuperation were encouraging, Vandemotter said. The new liver adjusted well to her body as she went through two months of treatment and rehabilitation in the hospital.

 

This time, there was no rejection. Her new liver responded so well that she has never had to go back to the hospital because of it again. Had her body rejected the liver, there would have been nothing left to do. Two transplants are the limit, Vandemotter said. No patient is allowed a third.          

 

Once she finally healed, Vandemotter didn’t have to fight liver disease or lay in a hospital bed anymore. She got to hang out with friends and prepare to go back to college. 

 

Vandemotter frequently visited her close friend Timber at Oklahoma State University once she was well enough to make the trips. She came to Stillwater so often that she decided to enroll at OSU herself. Her second attempt at freshman year began in the fall of 2014. 

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Vandemotter made a home for herself in Stillwater. She joined a sorority during the spring semester and found a new group of close friends.    

 

At the beginning of her sophomore year, Vandemotter rekindled her passion for soccer by trying out for the OSU women’s club soccer team. She made the team despite her five-year hiatus from the game. Now, she’s the starting forward.           

 

With a strong group of friends, a college soccer team and a functioning liver, Vandemotter is enjoying a wonderfully normal life. Her liverversary was a perfect marker for how far she has come, and it didn’t go unnoticed.

           

Annie Knapp, a junior marketing major, is one of Vandemotter’s sorority sisters and a close friend at OSU. She knew Vandemotter’s liverversary was special, so she made sure to put together a celebration. 

Knapp invited her to come to Mojo’s Restaurant in Stillwater for dinner and bowling. Once Vandemotter got there, a group of 15 friends were there to surprise her with cake and balloons.

 

“I think it’s really incredible that Hannah’s come so far,” Knapp said. “It’s not just a birthday. It’s a celebration of her life because she is thankfully alive today because of that liver.”

 

Although, the party was simple, the meaning behind it spoke volumes. Knapp and the others knew they would have never known their friend had she not survived the second transplant.

 

These days Vandemotter is focused on school, soccer and staying healthy. She takes more pills each day than she can count. Her friends call her bedroom Walgreens. Taking medication is barely a hardship for her, though. She has her health and her life back. She’s no longer restricted inside hospital walls.

 

“I want to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Vandemotter said. “Right now I’m just trying to live my life as normal as possible.”