A NEW BEGINNING: Scott Brown has new lease on life with double organ transplant

Published 9:09 am Friday, January 14, 2022

Just a couple of weeks before Christmas, Scott Brown received a gift he could never repay, but he’ll spend the rest of his life paying it forward. 

Brown was diagnosed with end-stage liver disease in mid-2020 and immediately placed on the transplant list. He had spent a year prior going to hospitals all over the state trying to figure out what was causing symptoms like the extreme fatigue that had robbed him of his once healthy and active lifestyle.

A trip to Emory University Hospital in summer 2020 would finally give Brown an answer. He spent 10 days there going through multiple tests, and on about the eighth day, the doctor came in and explained that his liver was dying. Immediately, Brown questioned if he was dying too.

“And the doctor looked at me, and she said, ‘Of course you are, but not today.’”

She explained to Brown that he could have an extended life through an organ transplant, and he was placed on the waiting list within a couple of days. With the waiting and uncertainty of what the future held, Brown said he went through minor stages of depression and anxiety. 

“I knew that I was on the transplant list, but that’s no guarantee that you’ll ever get one,” he said.

During that time, Brown’s kidneys began to fail as well. 

“As the liver fails, it will sometimes take down some of the other organs with it…,” he explained. “Because my liver was so bad off, my kidneys were working so much harder trying to maintain my bodily functions that they ended up failing as well.”

His kidney function declined to the point that he needed both a liver and kidney transplant, which caused him to be moved up slightly on the transplant list. As his condition continued to deteriorate, Brown was in and out of the hospital several times over the next few months. At the beginning of December, he spent another week at Emory, and on Dec. 10, doctors told him that his condition had degraded so much that they wouldn’t be able to send him home.

“I jokingly turned to the doctor and said, ‘Well, that means y’all need to find me a liver then,’” he recalled. “She laughed, and she said, ‘Yes, we do.’”

During the conversation, one of the doctors left the room.

“About an hour a half later, he comes back in the room, and there’s nobody there and I’m sort of sitting there … just befuddled not knowing what to do.”

The doctor told Brown to call his wife in Milledgeville and to tell her not to travel unsafely but to head to the hospital. 

“And I’m like, ‘OK, well what’s going on doc? Are y’all telling me this is it, this is the end?’ 

But it wasn’t the end for Brown; it was a new beginning.

“[The doctor] said, ‘I secured your organ, and it’s on its way to the hospital right now.”

About 7:30 that night, the surgeon and anesthesiologist came and talked to Brown and told him what he could expect. They took him down to the operating room and asked him if he had any questions. 

He had one.

“Is my wife here yet?”

They told Brown they had spoken with his wife, who was still in route, and she would be there when he got out of surgery.

“About 10 hours later, I woke up in the recovery room and looked to my left and there she sat,” he remembered. “And she was just so excited, she said, ‘Welcome home.’ And I said, ‘It’s so good to be here.”

Brown said he could tell a difference immediately. It’s been five weeks now since he received a new liver and kidney, and he has had no complications. Within a day or two of getting out of the recovery room, he was up walking the halls. 

After being discharged from the hospital, Brown and his wife stayed at the Mason House, which is about three minutes from the hospital and is available to recent transplant patients and their families. While there, he shared his story with others and was inspired to become a mentor for people who find themselves on the same road he has walked. As part of that, Brown has started a website to offer help and understanding to transplant patients.

“I have made it my goal to help other people that are in my situation,” he said.

His church, Black Springs Baptist, hosted a benefit gospel concert last September with the money raised going toward a donation to the Georgia Transplant Foundation. The money will go to educate and help other people understand more about transplants. Brown discovered that the disease is hereditary so he wants to create awareness. 

“It’s really not about me, I’m just one person,” Brown said last fall. “It’s about educating people about transplants because they do save lives.”

Brown hasn’t received any information on his donor yet. Eventually, the donor’s family will be given an opportunity to disclose their contact information through a letter to the hospital. If they choose to, Brown will be contacted and can set up communication with them.

“I would love to,” Brown said. “I really would. Nothing would make me any happier than to know who they are and be able to tell them how thankful I am for that gift because had it not been for that gift, I didn’t have a life ahead of me.”

For now, Brown has begun to drive and slowly get back into work. He still goes to Atlanta twice a week currently for intensive testing. 

Having been through all that he has over the past couple of years has given him a new outlook on life, and he does believe he is a miracle. Brown has been in the ministry for more than 30 years but had not been pastoring a church recently. He has been approached by churches to serve, though, and said he will likely take a church on soon.

“There was a time a year ago that I didn’t even expect to live, that I didn’t know what the future was going to hold, and now I just have so many ideas and so many things that are going on,” he said. “I want to use this energy that I’ve got and this good feeling that I’ve got, this positive attitude that I’ve got about the future. I’m just enjoying every second of it.”

Brown’s website is available at transplantmiracle.com .