Alexander Tufel, a 16-month-old Jewish boy from Seattle, has been placed on the active list for a liver transplant, which would be his second. He is listed in serious but stable condition after undergoing successful liver transplant surgery last Tuesday at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, according to a medical center spokesman.
“He came through the surgery well, with no complications,” the boy’s father, Alben Tufel, said last week. He said doctors were waiting to see if Alexander’s body would accept the new organ. “All transplant patients show some signs of rejection,” he said. “The question is, how strong will the rejection be?”
The spokesman said there were “serious signs of rejection.”
Alexander was born Jan. 2, 1986 without a bile duct, a condition called biliary atresia. The bile duct drains the liver. He had surgery to fashion a bile duct, but a serious infection damaged his liver, necessitating the transplant.
Alexander and his mother, Dianne, moved to Los Angeles in January to be near UCLA when a donor liver became available. Her husband stayed in Seattle to care for the couple’s two teenage children and continue his work as a teacher.
More than $3,000 has been raised in the Jewish community here through the efforts of the Tufels’ synagogue, Temple Beth Am, and The Jewish Transcript newspaper to help with the family’s non-medical expense. The toddler’s medical expenses, estimated to be more than $200,000, are being paid in full by the family’s insurance carrier.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
