This story is taken from The Gift at sacbee.com.
The sharp pain in his stomach jolted Bishop William K. Weigand from the solace of his morning prayer. Trying to catch his breath, he slid from the kneeler to the pew. It hit again; he nearly doubled over.
Weigand slumped there in the chapel at the Jesuit retreat outside Ontario and whispered a prayer.
"Lord, you chose me. It wasn't my idea to be a bishop. If this is what you want, you have to preserve my health."
Weigand would recite the prayer every day for the next 24 years. He would say it in hospitals waiting for treatment, at Lourdes rubbing healing waters over his abdomen and on the side of rural Northern California roads where he pulled over because he was too sick to drive to the next parish.
Doctors would diagnose primary sclerosing cholangitis, a little-known disease that blocks bile ducts in and around the liver, eventually destroying it.
There was no cure, no treatment, no reason to hope. It was 1981, and they gave Weigand,then the Catholic Church's bishop in Salt Lake City, five years to live.
A man of faith, Weigand believed that someday God and science would conspire to create a miracle. He believed that medical advances and the ancient teachings of the church could coexist. He believed God had a plan.
What the bishop didn't know was that the plan would be revealed to him more than two decades later, as he faced death, and a stranger would risk his life to save him.
It was five years after his diagnosis. He had had exams, biopsies, X-rays. Still no answers.
He biked, he lifted weights, he swam, hoping he could will himself well. And every year he took a week of his vacation and traveled from Salt Lake City to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
Weigand was only 48, so young for his position that Pope John Paul II referred to him as the "Baby Bishop." One of the youngest of the Roman Catholic Church's bishops, he was also one of the sickest.
Not much was known about his illness. No one, doctors said, knew how he'd developed the liver disease. It could have been the summers he spent spraying pesticides as a teenager in Spokane, Wash. It could have been genetic.
The bishop knew what people might think: that he had been secretly drinking in the rectory - "tipping a little holy water," was the expression - and the idea embarrassed him. He knew priests who drank a lot, but he wasn't one of them.
Still, his liver was failing.
Now doctors were about to tell him the results of his promising experimental trial, for which he had faithfully taken a pill twice a day. He inhaled the Minnesota air as he walked toward the clinic and envisioned when he could exhale with the satisfaction of hearing the words, "The drug worked."
He entered the clinic.
"I'm sorry," are the words the bishop remembers the doctor saying. "You were on a placebo."
More bad news followed.
The drug wouldn't have worked anyway.
The trial was unsuccessful.
There was still no cure.
Weigand left the doctor's office, certain of two things.
This wasn't God's will, not on this day anyway.
And he had already outlived the doctor's deadline.
The bishop believed God was keeping him alive. What, who else, could it be?
One medicine - Actigall, a drug often used to dissolve gallstones - helped his stomach. But only for a while. Doctors all over the country had told him there was nothing they could do.
And yet here he was 15 years into his diagnosis and now bishop of the Sacramento Diocese, serving more than half a million Catholics and 101 parishes. The diocese stretches 42,000 square miles from the southern part of Sacramento County to the Oregon border - so much larger than Salt Lake City, so much more demanding.
Weigand visited a quarter of the churches every year and believed the parish trips were the best part of his job.
Few knew how sick he was, and that was by design. He had kept his superiors at the Vatican informed along with a few close friends. A private man in a public position, Weigand felt uncomfortable talking about his health - especially with parishioners. He served them. It was his struggle.
"Everybody has a cross to bear," he'd say later. "Being sick was mine."
What parishioners saw was someone who appeared healthy, even robust. Weigand worked six days a week, beginning with daily 7 a.m. Mass and often ending with confirmations or diocesan meetings that ran into the evening.
"When you know your time is limited, you try to get as much done as possible," said Weigand.
What parishioners didn't know was that their bishop was nearly always tired, that the pain in his stomach was getting worse, that time was running out.
He felt it most during the parish visits that were a long drive. As he pulled onto the freeway, he clutched the steering wheel, searching for a rest stop or a safe place to pull over. One deep breath. Two. And soon he was praying with parishioners in Redding.
Weigand's liver was severely scarred; he was going into liver failure.
The bishop was undergoing treatment at the University of California, San Francisco, Medical Center. The procedure would keep him alive - but his body could not withstand it indefinitely.
Toxins were getting into his blood system. He was noticeably weaker. He had trouble focusing.
It was 1999, 13 years beyond what doctors said he would live.
The bishop's liver "was bad, real bad," said Dr. John Roberts. "I don't know why he didn't get sicker faster."
Friend Richard Hanifen, a Colorado Springs, Colo., bishop, prayed for him and gave him the sacrament of the sick. "Nobody thought he was going to be with us this long," he said.
Only one thing made Weigand feel better. At night, after a long day of pastoring had taken a toll on both body and soul, Weigand massaged his abdomen with holy water and prayed.
He had collected the water in Lourdes, France, where, believers say, the waters have the power to heal.
Still, he turned to doctors, and every six weeks a fellow priest drove him to San Francisco for treatment.
His physicians thought he'd be able to withstand the procedure for only about 18 months.
He would have it for five years.
"Divine providence," he'd say to friends. "It has to be."
Weigand had called this three-day meeting, the first diocesan-wide gathering in 75 years, drawing priests, parishioners and journalists. It would be one of the biggest accomplishments of his tenure.
And he was too ill to appreciate it.
Auxiliary Bishop Richard Garcia was talking with Weigand on the side of the room, then left to visit with parishioners. The bishop sat alone, pale and fatigued.
Others noticed.
"He doesn't look as if he's enjoying himself," said a concerned Barbara Wilson, a conference participant and longtime member of St. Philomene Parish in Sacramento.
What Wilson and others didn't know was that bile and toxins had begun seeping into Weigand's bloodstream, slowly poisoning him.
Weigand made it through the meeting. The next day, he was admitted into Mercy General Hospital for three days of observation.
"He is getting weaker," said Garcia, a few days later. "I'm really getting worried about him. I can really see a change in the past few months."
Weigand's liver was worse. The treatment was no longer enough. Weigand knew the odds of finding a liver from a deceased donor were remote - many people die waiting for one.
It was time to look for a living donor. It was time for a transplant.
The bishop had researched the surgery and understood it was relatively new. Medical advances were catching up with his condition, but a liver transplant from a living donor was still six times riskier than a kidney donation. A federal advisory committee on organ transplantation reports complication rates as high as 67 percent.
Living donor transplant surgery is especially risky for the donor, whose liver is expected to regenerate after surgery. In most cases, about 60 percent of the donor's liver must be removed and long-term effects are not known.
Weigand's brothers - all in their 60s and 70s - were not eligible to donate because of their age.
And if not a relative, who then? How could Weigand ask someone to risk his or her life to save his?
The bishop prayed. He talked to other bishops. He contacted the Vatican. How does the church stand on the issue?
The Catholic Church does not have a written document on living-donor transplantation, only a guiding principle that such surgery cannot pose too great a risk to the donor.
"You have to have a sense that what you are doing is not too experimental," said the Rev. Tad Pacholczyk, director of education for the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia. "There cannot be too great a risk to the donor."
But what exactly does high risk mean?
Weigand confided in Hanifen, his longtime friend.
"He said he didn't know what he'd do if something happened to the donor," said Hanifen. "He wanted to be sure it was what God wanted."
He reluctantly announced in January 2004 in an interview with The Bee that he was sick and looking for possible donors.
More than two dozen people came forward, many of them strangers.
But he still had doubts and he hesitated - for months.
"I don't want to put anyone at risk," he said.
He was sicker every day. He had trouble concentrating and could no longer get through the day without a nap. His eyes were glassy and his skin the color of ash. He moved slowly, as if every step hurt. His mind was in a fog.
One Sunday afternoon after celebrating Mass at a Lake Tahoe parish, he fell asleep at the wheel and was startled awake when his car hit the pavement markers. The parish visits ended.
Garcia took over most of Weigand's public events.
The bishop would spend much of his time at his Curtis Park home, praying in his private chapel, a former breakfast nook.
In the early morning hours of Nov. 4, 2004, he awoke.
His throat was parched, and he headed downstairs to the kitchen for a glass of orange juice.
He reached for the stair railing and fell.
The bishop does not remember falling down the stairs or hitting his head. He does not remember how long he was sprawled on the floor of his home.
He does remember that when he awoke, the house was dark and still, and he was alone.
And hurt. Weigand's right arm was scraped and his lower back was throbbing. Later, he would see the carpet burn stripped across his forehead.
He could not stand; the dizziness overwhelmed him. He crawled on his hands and knees up the stairs to his bedroom. He recited his prayer, the same one he'd recited every day for the past 24 years.
"Lord, you chose me. It wasn't my idea to be a bishop. If this is what you want, you have to preserve my health."
He fell asleep praying.
When he awoke, he had an answer.
70: Men make up 70 percent of those who get the disease.
45: Most patients are this age or younger when diagnosed.
85%: The odds of living for at least one year after a liver transplant for treatment of PSC.
Sources: UCSF, Columbia University
About the writer:
- The Bee's Jennifer Garza can be reached at (916) 321-1133 or jgarza@sacbee.com.
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