Community Heroes: Joe Carder finds a full life after liver transplant

JOHNSON CITY, Ten. (WJHL) — A Johnson City man has trained and is getting ready to leave to participate in a national competition. It’s different than many others: all of the participants have gone through life-changing organ, eye, or tissue transplants.

Joe Carder had a rare side effect from his prescription medication. In Jan. 2014, he went into liver failure. He waited months to receive a bittersweet call about a donor liver.

When his wife told him the good news, he said he hesitated briefly.

“She says, ‘Aren’t you excited it’s about to be over?'” Carder told News Channel 11. “And I said, ‘Well, somebody somewhere just lost a loved one, they’re not excited. They’re grieving.'”

After his liver transplant, Carder said he resumed his active lifestyle, and through a friend who also received a transplant, learned of the Transplant Games of America.

“And he said, ‘You’re going to do fine.’ He said, ‘I’ll see you in two years at the transplant games,'” he remembered. “And I kept thinking to myself, that’s going to take a miracle. But I did. Two years later, I was at the Transplant Games.”

In past games, Carder competed in cornhole, darts and table tennis. This year, his one sport is cornhole.

“I need a hip replacement,” Carder explains. “Because, when I was practicing for table tennis, I got a little too competitive and tripped over my partner’s foot and fell and broke my hip.”

But that’s not stopping Carder from competing and enjoying life.

“I told my wife the other morning at breakfast that I love my life right now. So it’s great. I’ve got four grandchildren. If I had not have had the transplant, they wouldn’t have remembered me. Yeah. But now I’m a big part of their lives.”

Most importantly, Carder says through the Transplant Games, he learned his definition of living the life he has to the fullest.

“I never did really know what that meant until I got to the Transplant Games the first time,” he said. “And all the recipients were so enthusiastic and so optimistic and just had a joy for life that you don’t regularly see. And they were so grateful for getting a second chance at life. And I thought to myself, that’s living life to the fullest.”

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