Patient to sing thanks after liver transplant
How would you express your gratitude for an anonymous liver donor whose selfless act while dying saved your own life?
Rich Miller turned to a liturgical composition by one of the world’s greatest composers. He invites the public to experience this unique expression of gratitude in the form of an 18th-century Mass performed by musicians and singers. The Rev. Kenneth Paulli, associate professor of education and chief of staff at Siena College, will officiate. “My donor is a hero to me. He is with me every step of the way. He gave me a second act and I wanted to find a way to say thank you,” said Miller, 57, of Loudonville, an attorney and trained opera singer who serves as president of the Metropolitan Opera Guild, a fundraising and educational arm of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
Miller received a lifesaving liver transplant at New York-presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City on May 31, 2021. He has made a full recovery following a two-year ordeal that began with excruciat
ing back pain and involved numerous treatments as doctors toiled to keep his failing liver functioning long enough for him to qualify for a transplant procedure as time was running out.
“I credit the power of positive thinking and our faith for keeping us going,” said his wife, Carol Miller.
“Rich went through hell and back. He showed extraordinary fortitude. I wish I could give him a patient’s Purple Heart,” said Dr. Matt Ben, a gastroenterology specialist with Albany Gastroenterology Consultants of Albany and Miller’s lead physician.
In gratitude, Miller will sing the tenor solos in the soaring and majestic liturgical composition, which Mozart wrote for the Salzburg Cathedral when he was likely still in his teens.
The public is invited to attend the special Mass on Saturday at 6 p.m. in St. Mary of the Angels Chapel on the Siena College campus in Loudonville. Miller has hired acclaimed performers from the Capital Region and New York City. Attendees are encouraged to make a donation to The American Liver Foundation.
The Mozart Mass is one way he is paying it forward. He also formed Team Gratitude for the Life Walk on June 11. The 2-mile walk along the Hudson River in Manhattan is a fundraiser for the American Liver Association.
The Liver Life Walk also raises awareness about the long waiting list of one year and more for a liver transplant. Some patients die before receiving one. All New Yorkers 16 years and older can register to be an organ donor and, if approved, an organ donor designation is printed on the front of a driver’s license.
Like Miller, as many as 1 in 4 Americans, including children, develop nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. It is caused by obesity, high cholesterol, stress and high blood pressure. It is more common than diabetes and arthritis combined. Left undiagnosed and untreated, severe forms can lead to life-threatening cirrhosis of the liver.
“Most people don’t know they have it,” Ben said, since there are often no symptoms. It is known as the silent liver disease. Miller went for a checkup due to severe back pain and diagnostic tests and blood work diagnosed liver disease that had progressed to a dangerous point where a transplant was the only option.
Now, Miller will be able to walk his daughter, Lauren, down the aisle at her wedding on June 18.
“That is a milestone that is really special,” his wife said.
“Every day is a gift now. I don’t take anything for granted,” said Miller, who was diagnosed with nonalcoholic liver disease in the spring of 2019, which left him weak, jaundiced, emaciated and gravely ill. A cancerous tumor was discovered on his liver and removed.
Miller and Ben, 55, both fathers of two, knew each other casually because their children attended The Albany Academies. The doctor-patient bond deepened their friendship. They spoke in the evenings a couple of times a week in what amounted to pep talks. “I wanted to do everything I could to make sure we got him across the finish line,” Ben said.
Ben strongly suggested that Miller curtail his work as an attorney in order to rest after treatments and recover from fatigue that comes with the disease.
Miller declined the advice because he is a trust-and-estate attorney with high-level clients and he was in the process of dissolving his former firm and joining Blank Rome as a partner. He normally drives between his Albany and Manhattan offices each week, but because of COVID -19 restrictions, he worked exclusively in his Albany office, which was mostly empty. His wife drove him.
For many months, Miller told only his wife of his liver disease diagnosis, even though his rapid weight loss, fatigue and jaundice was evident to his friends and fellow golfers at Schuyler Meadows Club.
“I was stubborn and didn’t want to tell people I was sick,” Miller said. “There’s a stigma attached to it.”
Medication disrupted his sleep patterns and he experienced waves of depression.
“There were times I broke down in private and cried,” he said.
A liver patient support group met weekly on Zoom. Miller continues to meet with onetime strangers who became as close as family.
“That group got me through so much,” Miller said.
At one point, nodules developed on his esophagus. He feared he might not be able to sing again, something that had given him great joy since adolescence. Opera has long been central to his life. He has performed in operas nationally and internationally with amateur and professional companies and at festivals. He is past president of the board of the Lake George Opera Festival (now Opera Saratoga) and a past board member of Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown.
As he lay alone in a hospital bed on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and awaited a 2 a.m. start of his liver transplant procedure, Miller took out his iphone and played the final 15 minutes of Richard Wagner’s epic Ring Cycle, the Gotterdammerung ,or “Twilight of the Gods.”
The leitmotif in that concluding passage is one of Miller’s favorite operatic pieces, a beautiful and stunning Wagner musical signature. It was a sublime moment that transported Miller into an ethereal place that eased his fears before his abdomen was sliced open on the operating table, his innards exposed — his life hanging in the balance.
The 12-hour surgical procedure was completed with a highly specialized medical team led by transplant surgeon Dr. Benjamin Samsteim.
When Miller regained consciousness, all he remembered was that Wagner’s haunting leitmotif played over and over in his mind, an out-of-body experience that made him wonder if he was alive or dead or in some netherworld.
“I kept hearing the beautiful melody of that leitmotif over and over. It felt like Wagner kept me alive,” Miller said.
When he awoke, Miller assumed it was the next day, Monday. He later learned he had been kept under with anesthesia for nearly three days to deal with some unexpected bleeding issues. It was actually Wednesday.
“The leitmotif at the beginning is how Wagner ends the Ring Cycle,” Miller said. The opera came full circle with its theme of the death of the gods and what they bequeathed to humans, a longing for the sacred.
Rich Miller, with the grace of his liver donor, is living his best life, filled with gratitude and a desire to give back.
He has raised the curtain on his second act.