Indiana transplant recipient riding in Rose Parade

NEW PALESTINE, Ind. (AP) - A central Indiana woman who has received two liver transplants will ride on a float promoting organ donation Thursday during the Rose Parade in California.

Julia Rejer, a 59-year-old mother of two, has been ill for many of the last 30 years because of a bile duct disease known as primary sclerosing cholangitis.

Rejer got sick when her children were 2 and 3. She was often exhausted and nauseated and assumed the symptoms were side effects of being the mother of two toddlers. It took about a year for doctors to diagnose her illness, which only affects about three in every 100,000 people.

Doctors told her she likely wouldn't need a transplant for 10 years, but when her liver did begin to fail, it would fail fast, she told the Daily Reporter (http://bit.ly/1y28zO1 ).

The New Palestine resident and her husband, Randy, lived each day not knowing whether she'd receive the transplant she needed.

"I thought, 'Wow, I might not see my kids graduate high school.' I made the best of it. I was very involved in their lives," she said.

About 10 years passed before her liver started to fail, and she was put on the transplant list. Another year passed before she underwent her first transplant in January 1997.

A year later, however, her disease returned, with more symptoms than before.

"I had a lot more complications, a lot more health issues, but I was able to see my kids graduate high school and college, which I never thought I would get to see," Rejer said.

She underwent a second transplant in February 2008 and the disease has not returned.

Rejer spends much of her time volunteering for the Indiana Organ Procurement Organization and Donate Life, the organizations that picked her to represent Indiana at the Rose Parade in Pasadena.

"She's really willing to push outside of her comfort zone to help us further our organization," said Corinne Osinski-Carey, community relations coordinator for the Indiana group.

Rejer said she often thinks of the decisions by two donor families that saved her life.

"There's not a day - very seldom an hour - that I don't think about my donors and how fortunate I was," she said. "I try to enjoy every moment because there have been so many moments that I've been too sick to even raise my head off the pillow."

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Information from: (Greenfield) Daily Reporter, http://www.greenfieldreporter.com