James Draper / Longview News

Beth English says she wouldn't be alive today if it weren't for Bert.

They've shared a lot in the past 11 years – her duties as a 911 specialist at Longview Police Dispatch, her children's graduations, her grandson's birth ... even her blood supply.

"Bert," as English affectionately calls it, is her transplanted right kidney.

"He saved my life," English said in an interview Thursday. "He's a member of the family."

English, 43, will join 23 other transplant patients in the 11th annual Organ Donor Softball Game at 4:30 p.m. Friday at the Dr Pepper Youth Ballpark in Arlington. The recipients will face 15 Metroplex media personalities in the game.

"It's an awareness-raiser ... to show the reporters and their audience how healthy these folks are," said Pam Silvestri, community education director for Southwest Transplant Alliance, which coordinated English's transplant and sponsors the game. "Every year there are at least one or two reporters who say, 'I cannot believe these people have had organ transplants.'"

English still shares some of that disbelief. She described herself as a sickly child who lived with kidney problems since she was 2. She had eight surgeries by age 8 and took antibiotics every day into her 20s.

"Then I got pregnant, and that was all she wrote," English said. Giving birth to Aaron, 20, and Jarod, 18, in January of '85 and December of '86, damaged her fragile kidneys even more.

English was 28 when doctors said her kidneys wouldn't last a few years more.

After years on medication, English believed she was past the worst of her condition; she had learned to live with it, undergoing peritoneal dialysis at home to rid her body of excess toxins.

But doctors removed her native kidneys on Jan. 3, 1994, and for two months English spent as many as 12 hours a week or more undergoing three sessions of "ungodly" hemodialysis as a machine filtered her blood in place of her kidneys.

English still shudders when she thinks of the hemodialysis procedure. Her minimum process time was three hours, and many nights she didn't return home until 10:30 p.m. after starting the procedure at 5 p.m.

"You can't prepare for that," English said. Nausea was a major problem, she added. So was despair. "I cried probably the first two or three weeks, every time I was up there. It was miserable."

But English said she was lucky – she only had to undergo the treatment for two months, the minimum amount of time between surgery and being listed on a the transplant queue, when she received the call.

On March 23, English's blood was being cleansed at Good Shepherd Medical Center, when Southwest Transplant Alliance representatives called and said she and two other people were eligible for the kidneys of a local donor who had died that day.

English was immediately tissue-typed and learned the next day she would receive one of the kidneys.

"They said I was the best match of the three. I was on the waiting for 17 days, which was unreal" compared to most donors, she said. The other kidney went to a woman who had been waiting five years for a transplant.

The next day, English underwent the transplant surgery, and Bert has been functioning wonderfully since then. English's coworkers at the Police Department's telecommunications center nicknamed the new kidney. "Bert," they said, was the closest name to "Beth."

English wrote the donor's family a letter through Southwest Transplant Alliance, expressing her gratitude and sympathy. All she was told was the donor was a 46 year-old Longview man who died from a gunshot wound to the head.

It was 10 years before she could bring herself to find out his identity. "I didn't want to know," she said. Considering the nature of the injury, English believed it could be one of only three people: a criminal, a victim of a crime or a suicide. "I couldn't handle it if it was a criminal."

Finally, English could wait no more. In March 2004, while running an errand at the Longview Public Library, she pulled the newspapers from the week the donor died and found an obituary of the man she believes saved her life. He had committed suicide, she said.

"It was happy for me. At the same time, there's a family hurting out there," she said, choking back tears. "We all love him."

English said has stacks of pictures from her childhood that show her bedridden in the hospital.

But, after more than 30 years of illness, English said her family has finally gotten used to her being healthy. She takes about eight immuno-suppressant pills a day to ward off organ rejection and often must take antibiotics as well to fight off infections, but "Compared to most people, I hardly take anything."

"I've done everything I can to take care of him," English said. "I don't have a lot of other problems that other people have," like diabetes and heart conditions, usually the original cause of their failed organs.

An avid "I Love Lucy" fan, English's office in the Longview Municipal Building is covered in memorabilia and pictures of her husband, her two sons, three stepdaughters and her grandchild who, of course, calls her "Bert."

Part of English's job is to educate the public about 9-1-1. Her second duty, she says, is educating others about the Southwest Transplant Alliance and organ donation.
As of July, there are 4,166 people waiting for kidney transplants in Texas, according to the alliance's statistics. Another 1,281 are waiting for livers, 170 are waiting for donated lungs and 322 are waiting for a heart transplant. Nationwide, 88,189 people are on the organizations waiting list for a variety of organs.

The alliance has helped save more than 15,000 lives since 1974, Silvestri said. The annual softball game, first organized when Mickey Mantle received a liver transplant in 1995, brings together a diverse group of players, recipients of every age, gender and ethnicity.

"When we go to schools the coolest message we spread about organ donation is we may look different on the outside, but inside we all work the same," Silvestri said.

Whether you're white or black or Asian you can give an organ to someone else."

Silvestri has no doubts about the upcoming game – the recipient team has won 11 times in 11 years. The media team won't have it any other way.

Proudly, they've never won," she said.

This will be English's first time on the field. "I've never played softball before – I was never allowed to do that stuff as a kid," she said, and proudly described her new ball glove. "

This will be a first.