Delano Herald Journal

Serving the communities of Delano, Loretto, Montrose, MN, and the surrounding area

Virgil Latzig: miracle on Dairy Avenue



To the Latzig family, the term “miracle” is very
appropriate.

This Christmas, they will have celebrated the one year
anniversary of the day that Virgil Latzig woke up from a successful liver
transplantation to the happy faces of his family.

Without hesitation, his wife, Ruth, calls Virgil her Christmas
miracle.

However, if you ask Virgil about the months of waiting
and surgery, he simply says, “I was nowhere around.”

And he wasn’t. Due to an unfortunate side affect of the
cirrhosis of his liver, he was in and out of comas for a six-month ordeal
last year.

The cirrhosis in Virgil’s liver was uncommon. Typically,
cirrhosis is caused by a bad blood transfusion, excessive drug use, or excessive
alcohol use.

However, Virgil had none of those causes in his history.
When he was finally diagnosed with the condition in December 1997, he was
told that he was one of 25 percent of cases that has an unknown cause.

What prompted that visit to the doctors at Ridgeview in
Waconia was actually a previous hernia surgery in November 1997. After the
surgery, Ruth said that things got bad for her husband as his abdominal
cavity was filling with fluid.

After seeing many doctors, the family ultimately saw a
specialist who diagnosed Virgil’s condition, but also advised them that
they would be travelling a mine field from now on.

Due to his condition, the chance of a hemorrhage in a thinned
esophagus was great. On July 23, 1998, Virgil had his first hemorrhage and
had to be taken by ambulance to Fairview Hospital in Southdale. The bleeding
was stopped, but Virgil fell into the first of a series of comas.

This was due to the build-up of ammonia in his system.
Ruth admits that she had never thought that the same product found in cleaning
products would be one found in humans, and would cause her husband to lose
consciousness.

From then on, the story is a whirlwind of doctor’s visits
and “frightful” trips to the emergency room. Daughter Pam Fiecke
said that her father visited the emergency room three times in eight days.

Also, beginning in mid-August, he was hospitalized on three
separate occasions. It was at that time that Virgil required special care
and had to be put in Auburn West, a nursing home in Waconia.

In part, this was due to the numerous comas. Since he was
unconscious often, his muscles began to weaken and he had trouble even buttoning
his own shirt.

During this time, the tests began to determine whether
Virgil could be a candidate for a liver transplant.

The Latzigs were told that a lot of testing would have
to be done to determine if he could be put on a list for transplantation.
This included a great deal of blood work, and Ruth recalls that at one point,
doctors drew out 23 tubes of blood from her husband.

Other tests included a heart stress echo to test the durability
of his heart for surgery and an ultrasound to, literally, examine the valves
that connect the liver to the rest of the body to match up size. Beyond
that, a candidate cannot have any other ailments to be eligible for transplantation.
This is due to cost and availability of organs.

At this time, the Latzigs were put on a list. A computer
search would begin to look for a donor in the state, region, and entire
country.

What prompted this was the recommendation of doctors from
the University of Minnesota. Essentially, Virgil’s condition had become
so bad that he needed the surgery urgently.

This meant the beginning of the wait. Ruth was given a
pager and was told to carry it everywhere until a donor became available.

A large part of transplantation is waiting. For the family
and patient, there is a pattern of waiting for tests, eligibility for candidacy,
waiting for the donor, waiting through the surgery, and waiting to see how
the organ will take.

Ruth describes it as a test of faith. When the process
began, the family was waiting for Virgil’s condition to get worse so surgery
would be available.

In November last year, the ordeal for the Latzigs was about
to end. At this point, Virgil was at the hospital in the U of M, with an
eight-member transplant team waiting to hear for an organ. As of November
13, he had been on the list, a big step for a patient.

In early December, Virgil fell at home and cut his forehead,
needing nine stitches. He then needed a shunt to relieve pressure from hemorrhaging.
That surgery took four hours and 10 days in intensive care.

It wasn’t until December 23 that the word came that a donor
was available. All the family knew, and would ever know, is that it was
a young man from Fargo.

After hours of prep time for surgery, and a 12- to 15-hour
procedure, an excited Dr. Abhinav Humar cam to the Latzigs in the waiting
room at about 3:30 a.m. on Dec. 24 and proclaimed the procedure a success.
That Christmas, Virgil woke up with a fully functioning liver.

Upon waking on Christmas, he would say, “Here comes
those three bums,” to his daughters and wife. That joke let them know
that he was alright.

More than a year later, it is hard to tell that he has
even had surgery. Not only was the operation a success, but the physical
and occupational therapy was successful as well.

At each stage, Virgil proved to be a quick healer, beating
the deadlines for his expected recovery.

Not only that, he is a testament to the importance of the
liver as a natural filter. His wife observes that he no longer has a cholesterol
problem as he did before the surgery.

Throughout the telling of the tale, there is an evident
sense of humor about the ordeal.

Even a neighbor, Bernie Wessling, jokes about how he missed
Virgil at the nursing home in Waconia by a day when he went to visit.

What is also evident is a great deal of gratitude to a
myriad of physicians, social workers, and staff who helped the Latzigs on
the way to transplantation.

Of course, a great deal of gratitude also goes to a young
man who checked “yes” on his driver’s license for organ donation.
Ruth calls that “the gift of life,” and is a firm believer that
everyone should do the same as their donor did.

According to the Latzigs, they were told that of the 16,000
people currently on the list for liver donation, only 4,000 will actually
get a transplant.

Also peculiar to the liver is that there is no stop gap
for its absence. There are heart and lung machines, but the shunt, which
Virgil had, was only a measure to bide time.

As for Virgil, he appreciates his new liver. He feels everyone
should go through some kind of similar experience to appreciate what they
have.

Bernie Wessling adds that people don’t appreciate what
they have until they lose it. To that, Virgil said, “I lost it.”

Christmas will be a much different affair for the Latzigs
this year. There will be no hospital and they won’t come home to presents
that were literally covered in dust after a prolonged absence. Nor will
they celebrate in February.

Yet Ruth said that last year was the best Christmas for
their family.

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