Michael’s wife Rita documented the whole ordeal. In the living room of his donor Mario Pinedo’s childhood home in National City, she heaves a large white binder into her lap, opens it, and flips to a picture of her husband at Scripps Green Hospital. Though Michael was 62 at the time, the combination of his sunken cheeks, the wheelchair, and the hospital gown ages him a good 25 years. When Rita passes the picture around the room, three of Mario’s sisters marvel at the difference between the Michael in the picture and the Michael sitting now in a chair against the far wall, beefy and healthy again, a somewhat bored look on his face.
“We got married in 1973,” Rita says. “Fool that I am. I should’ve read the fine print.”
The women laugh. The corner of Michael’s mouth twitches, but he doesn’t smile.
In 1977, after 11 years as a California Highway Patrol officer, Michael was forced to retire at 33 due to an on-the-job injury — a herniated disc. He had always wanted to be a policeman, and the retirement “pulled the carpet from under him,” Rita says. So he took to golf and scotch.
“We always liked our cocktails,” Rita says with a smirk. “Back in those years, they were doing lots of happy hours, and you could practically go have dinner with the hors d’oeuvres and that kind of thing. So he wound up having liver disease because he fell into the habit of drinking a lot.”
The average human liver weighs 2 1/2–3 1/2 pounds. The largest solid organ in the body, it performs essential functions, including detoxification of the blood and the metabolization of fats and proteins. In October 2002, Michael received his first diagnosis of cirrhosis, a disease in which scar tissue replaces healthy liver tissue, resulting in the liver’s inability to function.
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