One man left Kansas for a lifesaving liver transplant — but the problems run deeper
OLATHE, Kansas — Last year, Gary Gray's liver disease got so bad that it began poisoning his mind, sucking him into imaginary conversations with people who weren't there.
At one point, he became convinced that his family had turned their home into a commercial haunted house.
"I kept telling my wife to get all these people out of here," he said. "There weren't people here."
Gray, who's 64, had a rare autoimmune disease called primary sclerosing cholangitis. It attacks the body's bile ducts, leading to liver failure. He wouldn't live long without a liver transplant.
But despite debilitating symptoms that forced him to retire early and quit his bluegrass band, and turned him into someone his family hardly recognized, he still wasn't nearly sick enough to get a donated liver from the national waiting list.
Gray's doctors say that's partly because of a recent policy change that made it much harder for Kansans to get a lifesaving liver transplant.
New analysis detailing has forced renewed attention on the country's ailing transplant coordinator and kindled debate over how to fairly distribute a limited number of organs. But
