Spotlight: Bill Klahn

Transplant Olympian Receives the Gift of Life

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Transplant

Everyday Bill carried around a pager, fearing and longing for its piercing chimes. The University of Iowa Hospital and Clinic was the only one with the pager’s number. Leashed to him at all times, he guarded the tiny, black plastic box attentively. He wore it on his right hip, a constant reminder of the organ he may never receive.

On a warm day in June of 2005, Bill was dropping off his nephew at his apartment in Iowa City when it came. Fearful of the transplant, but more afraid of dying, Bill finally received the page he was most anxious for. A mile away from the hospital, he rushed to the transplant department almost debilitated with fear.

He spent that night in the hospital waiting for everything to be just right. While the staff prepped him for surgery, Bill asked to be put under right away. Seeing the sterile, metal tubes and tools surrounding him overwhelmed him, and he didn’t want to have to look at the “instruments of mass destruction.”

As he talked, I noticed his voice dropped to a near whisper. “I was scared to death,” he said.

He woke up fourteen hours later. It was a successful surgery. His body accepted the foreign organ like an old friend.

Eleven tubes were going in and out of him, but he didn’t mind them so much. “I immediately felt good. I felt different, but I felt great.”

At times the pain was incapacitating, but he considers himself lucky. He is especially proud of his scars. I ask him to show me, and he did. With a childish grin, he lifted his red, long sleeved Anheuser-Busch Colonial Half Marathon shirt to reveal a pale pink scar that rippled between his rib cage and out to the sides of his abdomen like an upside down wishbone. He likes to tell people it’s his Heidelberg dueling scar. But depending on his audience, sometimes it is the result of an audition to be a cadaver for “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.”

Five years later, he claims he is still in recovery. He isn’t as fit as he was prior to the illness, but he is getting stronger and stronger every day. The doctors told him that his athleticism prior to the surgery is what made it so successful.

Team Iowa

A few months after his surgery, during a routine physical therapy appointment, Bill learned about Team Iowa, an organization made up of organ transplant recipients. Every year, Team Iowa raises money for and trains to compete in the World Transplant Games.

Bill joined the organization without hesitation. After training hard for two years, he competed in his first Games in 2008. At the 17th Annual World Transplant Games in Australia, he took silver medals in the 50-meter breaststroke, 100-meter free style, and 200-meter medley relay. His strong performance helped lead the United States to finish third overall during the event.

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