Organ donation, family help local man through medical struggles

SEDALIA DEMOCRAT | Hope Lecchi

Larry Walter and his wife, Toni Walter, front row, stand with their family outside the Hopkins Student Services Center at State Fair Community College in early October. Larry has been through a remarkable medical journey during the past 26 years including two kidney transplants and 13 heart attacks. Walter recently started to speak throughout the state about the importance of organ donations. Walter credits the love, support and prayers of his family and friends as well as his physicians and medical workers for his survival.

Larry Walter is a fighter, which is ironic because Walter rarely raises his voice or speaks an unkind word. But make no mistake about it, he has been fighting almost every day for more than a quarter of a century to survive.

For the last 26 years, the 62-year-old has lived through a medical journey that quite possibly would have killed many patients, but still Walter fights on, for himself and for others through recent speaking engagements throughout the state about the importance of organ donations.

Since 1990, the husband, father of two, and grandfather has been on dialysis multiple times, received two kidney transplants, suffered 13 heart attacks, undergone triple by-pass surgery, an Aortic valve replacement and has survived cardiac arrest and countless other hospitalizations, yet he continues to move forward with his work and life, never giving up.

“Prior to 1990 I was a healthy man,” Walter said. “I was married to the love of my life, Toni and we had two sons, J.R. (11 at the time) and Aaron (who was 9).

“I was working 50 hours a week, traveling with my work as the marketing manager at Missouri Pressed Metals, playing softball and co-ed volleyball,” he added. “I had a good life.”

Everything changed later that year for Walter when a routine check-up for work showed he had elevated creatinine levels. Continue reading

_________________________________________________________

You have the power to SAVE Lives

We are asking you to register as an organ, eye and tissue donor today.

In California:

Donate LIFE California | Done VIDA California

Nationwide:

Organ Donor | Donate Life America

To ensure donation happens, please share your decision with your family. At stake is the legacy you wish to leave.

from Donate Life Organ and Tissue Donation Blog℠ http://ift.tt/2eQj0BQ