Chesterfield man shares transplant journey for Liver Awareness Month

CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, Va. (WRIC) — After several major surgeries, Chesterfield County resident Jason Crutchley hopes his transplant journey will uplift others like him to continue fighting their own health battles.

Crutchley told 8News that he was born in 1976 with four congenital heart defects and doctors estimated that he would only be able to live for one hour.

“All four individually are very common, defined in males, but to find all four of them in one is extremely rare,” Crutchley said.

At six weeks old, he underwent his first surgery called a Pulmonary banding. At age six, he was given a 2% chance at life when a successful surgery called the classic Fontan procedure saved him.

Decades later, the surgery would come with its own set of complications.

“One of the problems with the Fontan procedure is it creates excessive pressures, blood pressures throughout the body,” Crutchley said.

Those excessive pressures caused cirrhosis, a scarring of the liver, which later turned into liver cancer, or hepatocellular carcinoma, in 2017.

“That floored me because all I knew was my heart condition,” Crutchley said. “That was my life, I knew it, I accepted it, I was fine with it. But to deal with anything else was so foreign to me.”

Instead of giving up, Crutchley used his life experiences as motivation.

“You learn how to adapt and overcome,” Crutchley said. “I’m not going to sit down and let this take control of me. It’s not going to define who I am. I will define who it is and I will show and prove that it’s not a killer disease, not for me.”

Crutchley would later have successful liver and heart transplant surgeries in 2019 and today, he is giving back to the community — volunteering, educating and advocating with the American Red Cross, Donate Life and the Global Liver Institute.

Crutchley said he hopes his story of triumph can inspire others.

“I have a moral obligation to help those that are going in my shoes, those that feel that they don’t have hope,” said Crutchley. “The parents out there with children that have a [congenital heart disease], I have a moral obligation to them, you know, to show them that, no, just because your child has, you know, a congenital heart defect, it’s not the end of the world.”

Crutchley said he still has his own set of problems post-surgery and continues to get treatment at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center. But his quality of life is far better than before the transplants.

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