Organ Transplant Recipients Meet in Briarcliff

The Daily Mount Pleasant | Tien-Shun Lee

BRIARCLIFF MANOR, N.Y. – When Vikram Sharma began itching all over his body in March of 2009, he thought he had some kind of skin rash. He went to see a doctor who told him he had a problem with his liver, and a few days after that prognosis, Sharma was found in his home unconscious in a pool of blood.

Sharma, 48, of Ardsley, was diagnosed with primary biliary cirrhosis, a condition where inflammation in the bile ducts of the liver blocks the flow of bile and leads to liver scarring. Sharma was put on a waiting list to receive a liver transplant, and about six months later, he underwent a transplant operation at Columbia University Medical Center in Manhattan.

"I feel great," said Sharma, two and a half year later at a Wednesday meeting of the Transplant Support Organization held at the Congregation Sons of Israel in Briarcliff. "In my case, the medical team could never find out the root cause of my disease. I'm a vegetarian, I rarely ate red meat. I never drank in my life and I exercised regularly. I was a volunteer soccer coach in Ardsley."

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