CLEVELAND — For Bernie Kosar, Feb. 17 is a date that hadn't held much, if any, meaning over the years, but this year it's truly a special day, as it marks three months since receiving a liver transplant and the passing of a key phase in the recovery process.
Kosar spoke with News 5 after his three-month check-in. So what did the doctors have to say?
"I guess on camera they didn't say hey everything's perfect to the point where hey we're still in the winter months with the cold and flu season, COVID rates all that are up so I still am susceptible with a suppressed immune system," Kosar said. "To be able to drive now, to be able to exercise, to be able to do work and stuff, put on weight, and you know start thinking about getting back into a regular day-to-day life is actually what University Hospitals and Dr. Zoe have been recommending."
Dr. Zoe Stewart Lewis, UH's chief of Transplant Surgery, spoke following Kosar's release from the hospital just before Thanksgiving about his road ahead.
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"So we see patients once a week for a couple of visits. Lots of blood testing, we take very close monitoring," she said in November. "So blood work twice a week typically to make sure that we're having a tight hold on what's going on as he and the new organ get used to each other."
It was one of those blood tests that detected what Kosar labeled a slight rejection and landed him back in the hospital for more than a week at the start of January.
"I did a Monday test like this and didn't feel as good as I felt today but I thought I felt good and then came back six hours later and the blood works numbers didn't look good," Kosar said.
While the three-month mark is a good hurdle to clear, Kosar knows this journey is not a sprint but a marathon.
"Well still to stay consistent," Kosar said his doctors told him. "To not get to cocky with what's going on because you are still at risk for being immune suppressed and then especially coming out of what is still a tough cold and winter season."
Kosar's progress was so good by mid-January that his medical team gave him the green light to make a quick trip to Miami for college football's National Championship game between his alma mater, the University of Miami, and Indiana University.
"My family and specifically my daughters did not want me to go so it would have been a tough sell to me to make the move to just go," he said. "So when Dr. Zoe was good with it that really kind of gave me the comfort that hey I really am doing good, I'm not doing something frivolous or putting myself at risk with the great gift I was giving."
Kosar's also been cleared to appear next week, signing autographs at the Cleveland Auto Show at the IX Center. Being ever so careful as he mentioned to protect the life-saving gift given to him by his donor, 21-year-old Bryce Dunlap, whose legacy and memory he now carries with him.
"Again I can't spiritually thank him up looking down upon me and us but being within me. I can really feel it and I kind of thought that that would happen but to genuinely have it happening it's, I don't want to say surprising but it's so confirming and just so blessingly thankful."
Aiding his recovery, he said, is the time he's getting to spend with his young granddaughter, whom he often shares videos of on his social media accounts.
"To put things in perspective the family is first, the genuine love of seeing the next generation and then for the physical recovery— I'm doing proper mechanics picking her up down there at 6' 5," it's not conducive in getting to the ground post liver transplant and needing a couple of more surgeries, so it's phenomenal for my rehab," he said. "Then just spiritually, emotionally... what it does for my mental health and I believe our family's is so therapeutic and such a blessing."
