South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
5-organ transplant recipient is following his purpose with faith and family: ‘We never knew this was possible.’
5-organ transplant recipient following his purpose with faith, family
Phillip Hanks, of Joliet, Illinois, a father of six, received a multivisceral transplant — a simultaneous transplant of multiple organs — at Indiana University Health in Indianapolis in late April. He received a new liver, small and large intestine, stomach, pancreas and kidney.
He laughs when he’s compared to the star of the show “The Six Million Dollar Man.”
“He’s very motivated — not just motivated, but very committed to getting himself better, to making himself as well as possible,” Hanks’ transplant surgeon Dr. Richard Mangus said.
At age 50, Hanks has already lived a life worthy of a television movie. Growing up the youngest of four siblings in a singleparent home, Hanks said he had to fight bullies to, from and in school. Threatened by gangs his senior year of high school, he got his GED, putting college on hold to contribute to the household.
Eventually, he would go into information technology, taking electronics courses at a local community college. Fast forward past a bad first marriage to a meet-cute in a grocery store where Hanks met his current wife Tiva, a first grade teacher. Oh, and the former IT director is still recuperating from his previous transplant.
That’s right, previous transplant. The 2021 multivisceral transplant was a redo. The first was a liver transplant in 2007 after Hanks developed hepatitis C from what physicians believe was a re-sterilized needle used in one of his two tattoos.
Hanks’ recuperation from the 2007 surgery didn’t go smoothly, according to Tiva Hanks. The new liver had an extra valve that his old liver did not, and when he was in recovery, he began to bleed internally through it. That pushed him into renal failure.
“They put him on dialysis, and he was in an induced coma for about a week. He had all kinds of issues,” Tiva Hanks said.
“They had to massage my heart to keep me going,” Phillip Hanks said. “It took a long time to recover from that one.”
But Hanks bounced back and started living his regular, active lifestyle once again — one of exercise, family and faith. When he came out of the coma, his wife gifted him with the news that they would be having their first child together (the pair have two children each from their first marriages). That child, Aliya Hanks, celebrated her 13th birthday in July.
Life was lived until 2019, when a pickup game of basketball with his son revealed the need for a new liver and a new kidney. During the game, a pain shot down his arm, and up his back. He shrugged it off on the court, but as the day went on, the pain grew stronger. When he got back to the house, he was almost in tears, the pain was so intense, Hanks said.
“Over the course of the three days, I went from taking two 800 milligram ibuprofen, every four hours to popping them like they were candy,” he said.
Hanks went to the hospital and stayed for a month and a half, hoping professionals could find the source of his pain. By the end of his stay, Hanks had a diagnosis of fourth-stage kidney failure, and a need for a new liver.
The couple learned scar tissue from the 2007 transplant surgery completely closed off Hanks’ portal vein (the vessel that drains blood from the gastrointestinal tract and spleen to the liver). Medical professionals, unable to reopen the vein, referred him to transplant centers; the Hankses chose IU Health.
“They explained that a multivisceral organ transplant would be the best step for him,” Tiva Hanks said. “They’d replace everything, so you don’t have to worry about the portal vein.”
Mangus said there are about 50 of these types of multivisceral transplants done in the country every year out of 300 million people.
Mangus gave the Hankses a 50% chance that the transplant would be successful. Two days after his 50th birthday, Phillip Hanks got the call that a donor was found. The first surgery was April 26, when the intestine, stomach, liver and pancreas were placed over the course of 7 ½ hours, Hanks’ wife said. During the second operation, the following day, Mangus placed the kidney in 4 ½ hours. Within an hour and a half after waking up from the second surgery, Hanks was sitting up and asking to walk the hospital floors. Nurses and doctors were in awe at the speed of his recuperation.
Restricted from heavy lifting, Hanks is currently trying to put the weight back onto his 6-foot-3-inch frame that he lost during his illness. In the meantime, he’s moving forward with the goal of helping others. He wants people to glean inspiration and faith from his story.
“I think attitude and frame of mind has a lot to do with recovery. ... The mind is a powerful tool,” Hanks said. “I try my best to stay positive because if you get negative, you can get defeated.”
Hanks is taking chaplain classes online in hopes of taking his message of positivity to as many platforms as possible — public speaking, a possible documentary or a book. He’s also open to being on posters for organ donation.
“I’m very sorry for the loss of the family of the person I got the organs from, but one loss of life saved another life,” Hanks said. “Speaking on that platform, speaking on a faith platform to people out there with negative attitudes and the ‘can’t dos’ ... that’s on my brain. I’m just a passenger in this; God was driving. That’s why I’m looking into ministry.”
Hanks and his wife said a lot of people have never heard of a multivisceral transplant.
“We never knew this was possible,” Tiva Hanks said. “If we can share this information with people so they know that there are options, then we’ve done something. This is not something that happens all the time. We just kept going until we didn’t get a ‘no’ because we didn’t have a choice.”