3rd attempt at transplant is successful Published: 2:00 AM – 01/07/11

It’s been tough, Jake Porter allows.

“Tough” hardly describes the ordeal the 19-year-old Highland resident has endured since returning home from a class trip to Canada more than three years ago. Food poisoning contracted on the trip apparently triggered a form of hepatitis that attacked his liver and sent him reeling, slowly and painfully, to the brink of death.

His life ever since has been a roller coaster of mysterious symptoms followed by diagnostic guesses and wrong turns, painful therapies, stabilizations that faded, hospital stays that seemed to go on forever.

The cost of Jake Porter’s transplant surgery probably will cost $500,000. even though the family has health insurance, Jake’s parents, Don and Elaine Porter, can expect to pay at least $115,000 in surgery-related expenses.

The Porter family, which includes Jake’s two older brothers and younger twin sisters, has asked for assistance from an organization called Children’s Organ Transplant Association, based in Bloomington, Ind., which is dedicated to organizing and guiding communities in raising money for transplant-needy patients. its services are free. Elaine Porter has high praise for the organization and its willingness to raise money.

“And they don’t take any money for themselves – they’ve been great,” she said from her son’s bedside earlier this week.

There’s more:

Through it all, through his junior and senior years at Highland High, Porter was captain of the tennis team and an all-star soccer player. he was among the top 10 graduates his senior year. he worked weekends and summers. he was accepted at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and continued to excel there at whatever he did.

All the while, no matter how resolutely he carried on, his body was failing him. the diseases (official names: autoimmune hepatitis and sclerosing cholangitis) literally were eating at him, destroying his liver.

Then, on Dec. 17, a compatible liver was secured and he underwent transplant surgery. the prognosis is good; he’s been told he may be discharged by next week.

In trying to summarize his feelings in the wake of surgery during a telephone interview, Porter hesitated for a moment, casting about to find the right word.

He settled on the word “grateful.”

The prayers, the online notes, the fund-raisers that his family and friends back home in Highland had for him all had an effect, he said.

“They kept me going when I doubted. I’d begin to feel like ‘I can’t do this anymore,’ then I’d read a bunch of comments on Facebook …”

“They helped pull me through.”

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