'I wanted to do it for them'

Lee Yobbi | The New Mexican

7/19/2008 - 7/20/08

As the ball sailed through the air, Troy Childers prayed that it would be enough.

It had to be. There was a memory to honor and a debt to recognize.

Childers' throw landed 205 1/2 feet from where it began its flight. With that softball throw, Childers, the smallest man in the field of nine, did what he set out to do. He won a gold medal in that event as part of Team New Mexico in the 2008 U.S. Transplant Games last week. It's a medal he'll take to show the family of a 13-year-old girl who he has never met, and never will, but to whom he is eternally grateful.

Childers had rehearsed what he will say when he meets the family of the child whose pancreas is now within him. All he knows is that she was killed by blunt force trauma to the head and that she was Hispanic. He read that in a report at the hospital. Childers had gone over what he thought he needed to say and in what order, but he didn't like the way it sounded. So he will speak from the heart when he sees them. He's not sure when that will be, but hopes it's within a year. He's written two letters to the family and is trying to arrange a meeting.

He hopes a feeling of peace will come over him when he's face to face with them, the same feeling he felt as he went through the double doors to the operating room of a California hospital on Feb. 26, 2004. It was the day Childers' life began again. It took one helicopter ride from Santa Fe with his mother and wife in tow, and six hours of surgery to give Childers a second chance.

He thought about that day at the Games held in Pittsburgh July 11-16. He thought about how fortunate he had been and how he would not waste the opportunity. Childers again won gold in his later events, the 400- and 800-meters in the 30-39 age division.

"I didn't know what to expect at the Games," says Childers, 34, a first-timer. "I just knew I wanted to win a medal so that I could show my donor family that I was doing something with what I was given. I wanted to do it for them."

Childers, a 27-year diabetic, had always been active. He played baseball, softball, lifted weights and ran. But he was also checking his blood-sugar levels seven to eight times a day, even getting up at night to test himself when the disease was at its worst.

The pancreas controls certain hormones and enzymes in the body, which regulate digestion and the breaking down of certain proteins, sugars and carbohydrates. It would only be a matter of time, Childers says, before his kidneys started to fail in conjunction with his pancreas. Childers waited for just over a year on a transplant list and, symbolically, on Ash Wednesday, he heard he would receive his wish.

"I woke up after the operation and felt like a new man," Childers says.

He began training for the Games — which take place every two years and are open to any child or adult who has had a life-saving organ transplant — in 2005. But a pair of knee injuries kept him from the 2006 Games. He began again last winter, even running during his lunch breaks at Los Alamos National Laboratory where he works. He was put on Team New Mexico, 10 members who made the 12-sport Games. Kidney recipient Bob Skaggs, 72, also of Santa Fe, won swimming gold in the 100 freestyle, 100 backstroke and the 200 free in the 70-plus division. It was part of four first-place finishes for him in the pool.

Childers recalled lining up to run the 800 and being the only one in his age group. He, of course, was assured first place, but he accepted another challenge for himself: beat some of the 18-29 year-olds he was lumped in to run with.

He beat all but two of the six runners with a time of 3 minutes, 22.97 seconds. He beat three others in his own age group in the 400, crossing in 1:12.29. For perspective, the qualifying time for the New Mexico High School State Track and Field Championships in Class A in the 400 is 53.50. For the 800, it is 2:09.20.

"It was very competitive out there," Childers says.

Childers remembered seeing all the recipients, some with their donor families, part of the roughly 7,000 attendees. He remembered thinking they were like him with so many stories to share, and each man or woman with the same goal: take advantage of every day and live it to the fullest.

"Right now I have a new lease on life, I'm always excited, always happy and keeping my chin up," says Childers who plans to compete again in the Games and is trying to make the international games in 2009.

Childers also remembered the cause. He can recite the numbers.

"Like 18 people die a day that need a transplant. Almost 100,000 people are waiting on a list."

Childers knows how lucky he is. He's living his second chance.

And he can't wait to tell a certain family how thankful he is for that.