Retired firefighter grateful for gift of a lifetime
By Tim Hadac
Managing Editor
Southwest Chicago Post
Managing Editor
Southwest Chicago Post
Like millions of Americans, Shawn Hughes has long understood the value of organ donations.
But it wasn’t until now that the 62-year-old Garfield Ridge resident really felt that value.
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| Shawn Hughes |
Hughes is currently taking it easy at home, recuperating after transplant surgery in August.
A son of the SW Side
Hughes grew up in Vittum Park—one of eight children. He attended Our Lady of the Snows School and went on to graduate from Curie High School in 1981. Back then Vittum Park was a tight little community, evidenced by the fact that Hughes and his grade school crowd still get together for lunch and other events some 50 years later.
After Curie, Hughes joined the Air Force and was stationed in Athens, Greece and later in Texas.
After several years in uniform, he came home and worked an office job for phone companies until 2000, when he got the call to join the Chicago Fire Department.
“I could have stayed in an office job, but I wanted to challenge myself,” Hughes recalls. “So I did, and I made it. It was the best move I ever made. It’s the world’s best job, the Chicago Fire Department.”
His CFD duties took him to a firehouse in Bridgeport, and his final years on the job were spent close to home at the firehouse at 56th and Narragansett—especially valuable because it enabled him to help raise his grandchildren.
Illness strikes suddenly
It was during that time—specifically, Thursday, Nov. 18, 2021—when Hughes was home alone and feeling out of sorts.
“I went to my bathroom and I just threw up,” he recalls. “I threw up blood. It was like a crime scene. There was blood everywhere.
“I knew I needed to get to the hospital. So I started to walk to the car…and I thought, ‘I can’t do this,’ so I called 911 and an ambulance came from the firehouse on Narragansett.”
He vomited blood in the ambulance. “It just came on that quickly. It was an ordeal. Later, I was told I lost seven of 13 units of blood.”
He was rushed to Loyola University Medical Center, where he was in the ICU for a week, diagnosed with nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), characterized by inflammation and liver damage, along with fat in the liver.
“Well, they patched me up, I went home and we nursed it for a few years,” Hughes continues. “I didn’t feel terrific, but I was getting by.”
Health takes a sharp turn for the worse
He retired from CFD in 2023 and started to settle into a quiet life. But earlier this year, his health “took a turn for the worse. I started retaining fluids, I was huge with the swelling,” he says.
“On July 31, a doctor told me I was in such bad shape, ‘Either we’re going to get you a [donated] liver in a hurry or we’re going to have to let [the disease] run its course,’” Hughes recalls with a very slight waver in his voice.
His case was made a top priority for a transplant, and just four days later, the call came. A donor liver was available.
After a 12-hour surgery, Hughes and his family learned that the donor was a young man about 20 years old.
“I’ve heard he had a heart defect and his family was keeping him alive just to donate whatever organs they could,” Hughes says. “If they hadn’t made that decision, I’d have been a goner. I was within a few days of dying. I knew that because the [transplant] surgeon told me that when they took my liver out, the veins that attach the liver to the rest of my body just disintegrated in his hands.”
The gift of a second chance
“So that’s how close I was to dying. It’s not like missing a kidney and going on dialysis. If you don’t have a liver, you don’t have a life.”
He came home from the hospital several weeks ago, greeted by family, friends, neighbors, CFD brothers and sisters, and others.
He credits his sisters, as well as the rest of his family and friends, health care team and others with his survival.
He credits his sisters, as well as the rest of his family and friends, health care team and others with his survival.
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| (More photos below.) |
“But for the grace of God, as well as the help I received from those pulling me through, I’d have never made it,” he says.
“I get stronger every day. I’m fully aware that I was given a gift, a second lease on life. I’m going to live the best life I can. I owe it to everyone responsible for that gift, and I owe it to myself.”
(Editor’s note: To learn more about becoming an organ donor, visit giftofhope.org. To learn more about the fight against liver disease, visit liverfoundation.org.)
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