Cherry Hill resident and recipient of liver, kidney wins at Transplant Games
Bert Fox just keeps right on rolling, living a life fraught with more complications and punctuated by more joys than most would experience in several lifetimes.
The long-time Cherry Hill resident traveled to Utah in August to compete in the 2018 Transplant Games, a multi-sport festival that promotes organ, eye and tissue donations and aims to demonstrate the process works and those who receive donations can lead healthy and even exceptional lives.
A regular attendee since the 1990s, Fox returned home as a gold medalist not in his usual swimming and volleyball events — of which he will proudly boast and display his numerous medals — but in the relatively new sport of cornhole. The aim is to toss bean bags toward an elevated wooden plank with a hole cut out one-quarter of the way down from the top edge. One point is awarded for a bag that lies on the plank and two points are awarded for a bag that goes through the hole. The winning team usually has to rack up 21 points.
Fox and his mixed doubles partner, Jennifer Ray, lost only one game en route to the title.
“We ended up playing the team that we beat the first time, again for the gold medal,” Fox said. “They beat us the first game (of the round robin), but they had to win twice because they had already lost one. The last game, we won because we beat them in a 7–0 shutout.”
It was a triumph that offset a year of concern for the Foxes.
Despite relatively smooth sailing following Bert’s liver transplant in 1995, in the winter of 2017, Bert had some irregularities with his blood work. After visiting the doctors, he was informed the anti-rejection drugs he had taken for the past two decades were causing problems with his kidneys. Angel, his wife, was a match, and the wheels were set in motion for the surgery to take place. In April 2017, Angel proved her love by undergoing the surgery and providing the gift of life.
“They tell you to watch out for it. For some people, it’s two years, for me, it was 22 years. I was about a month away from going on dialysis,” Fox said.
Due to the short time frame in between his kidney transplant and the games, along with Salt Lake City’s notoriously poor air quality, Bert decided against competing in his usual swimming events, opting for something a little less intensive.
“I didn’t feel up to swimming at that point just yet, because the transplant was last year, so I hadn’t built up my swimming times. But I was looking for something else I could do that was not so physical, and the cornhole came up,” Fox noted.
Nonetheless, seeing her husband on the podium, crowned a champion after all he had endured, moved Angel to tears moments after Bert reached down and placed the gold medal she herself bestowed on her beloved, back around her own neck.
“It’s not unusual for transplant recipients to give their medals back to their donors if it means something to them,” Angel said.
As a teenager, Bert became ill and doctors began treating him for mononucleosis. Then, in his early 20s, Bert got progressively sicker and doctors eventually discovered cryptogenic hepatitis, a form of hepatitis where the cause is unknown. For about 25 years, Bert suffered from chronic liver disease before receiving a liver transplant.
Angel and Bert both want to impress upon the public the need for more organ donors. According to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, more than 122,000 people in the United States were on the waiting list to receive an organ transplant in 2015. In addition, while 95 percent of Americans support organ donation, only 48 percent are signed up as donors.
The Foxes also encourage everyone they meet to sign up as an organ donor, saying anyone could be a savior to someone in need of an organ. New Jersey residents can sign up to become an organ donor at www.donatelifenj.org.
With the worst behind him, and buoyed by his recent success, Fox is always looking forward. He’s planning to attend the next Transplant Games, scheduled for June 2020 in North Jersey. For more information, visit www.transplantgamesofamerica.org.
