Free State senior-to-be Ali Jacobsen will be competing in the U.S. Transplant Games in Pittsburgh over the weekend. It will be her third trip to the Games, which take place every two years. At just 7 months old, a liver transplant saved Jacobsen's life in Omaha, Neb.

Many mothers choose to pierce their daughters’ ears when they are infants because they believe children that age are too young to remember the pain.

Ali Jacobsen’s story takes that notion to a whole different level.

Ali, a senior-to-be at Free State High, remembers playing on her grandparents’ off-white carpet near their fireplace in Grand Island, Neb., when she was 2 years old. She also remembers falling off of her bike into an evergreen tree near the family’s home when she was 4, and recalls receiving a Barbie mansion, complete with Barbie RV, at age 5.

She has no recollection of the liver transplant that saved her life.

“She doesn’t remember,” said Ali’s mother, Michelle Jacobsen. “And, in a sense, that’s probably a good thing. She was hooked up to so many machines and had to undergo so many tests, it’s good that she can’t remember the pain.”

Diagnosed with Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency, a condition that can lead to lung and liver failure due to the lack of the Alpha-1 enzyme, Ali began fighting for her life just months after her birth on Sept. 4, 1991.

At a routine, four-month check-up, doctors suggested a liver biopsy and told Ali’s parents that their daughter likely would need a liver transplant at some point down the road. Michelle and Dennis Jacobsen had no idea that “down the road” meant seven months after her birth.

The biopsy never happened. Ali’s visit with a pediatric specialist in Omaha, Neb., revealed a transplant was necessary. And fast. Amazingly, the pediatrician tending to Ali needed only to feel around the outside of her 8-pound, 5-ounce frame to make his life-saving diagnosis.

A fast fix

It took two weeks for Ali’s name to show up on the donor list, and doctors told the family it could take four to six months before a match was found. But like everything else that happened early in Ali’s life, that, too, moved faster than expected.

“We were very, very shocked to get a call just eight weeks after she was listed,” Michelle said. “To be honest, we weren’t prepared for it. We had four to six months set in our minds, and in a sense that, too, was a good thing because we didn’t have time to be nervous.”

That’s not to say those eight weeks were easy. The Jacobsens constantly worried about what impact Alpha-1 was having and also wondered if Ali was developing cirrhosis of the liver, a hardening of healthy liver tissue that is commonly found in Alpha-1 infants: a disease for which there is no cure.

In addition, Michelle was forced to keep track of a pager at all hours of the day.

“One time the battery malfunctioned and it went off and we were kind of freaked out,” Michelle said. “The whole thing was pretty nerve-racking.”

Those nerves were calmed once a match was found. At that point, things began to look up for Ali and her family. The entire transplant, from pre-op to post-op, took just 10 days. At the time, that set a Nebraska Medical Center pediatric record for the shortest transplant stay.

Living to compete

Today, Ali focuses on setting different records as a successful high school athlete and two-time competitor in the U.S. Transplant Games. Her third trip to the Games, which take place every two years, comes this weekend, when she travels to Pittsburgh to compete in volleyball, table tennis and the shot put.

The Transplant Games began in 1990 as a way to celebrate the successes of transplantation and to raise awareness about the need for donors. The first event took place in Indianapolis and attracted around 400 competitors. This weekend, more than 4,000 participants are expected to converge on Pittsburgh for the event. That list includes Jacobsen and Lawrence resident Mike Strauss, 43, who had a liver transplant in 2001.

Both Lawrence competitors will compete for Team Mo-Kan, which is made up of 25 former transplant patients ranging in ages from 8 to 62. Both local athletes said they were excited about competing, but were looking forward to hearing other success stories and celebrating the cause more than anything else.

“It’s my favorite event,” Strauss said. “I wish it was every year. I’m a little social butterfly at the thing. I go around and talk to everbody and find out their stories. It’s amazing what people have overcome.”

Strauss, like Ali, competed in the Transplant Games in 2004 and 2006. Both times he walked away with a gold medal in golf. This year, he’ll defend his golf title while competing in basketball and table tennis as well.

During her first two appearances at the event, Ali won five Transplant Games medals – 2 gold, 3 bronze – but insists that winning is the farthest thing from her mind when she’s there.

“There’s not a lot of competition to win,” she said. “It’s more just being there because you can, because you’re alive and because it’s fun.”

‘A healthy, healthy girl’

Aside from daily medication and routine blood work to make sure her liver is functioning properly, Ali’s life resembles that of normal high school senior. Her room overflows with Free State High memorabilia and she spends most of her free time hanging out with friends, supporting the Firebirds or playing volleyball.

“I try to live my life as normal as possible,” Ali said. “But at the same time I do go for things. I always try to live life to its fullest and take some chances. I’m very grateful that I haven’t had that many problems.”

In many ways, the day of Ali’s transplant – April 11, 1992 – marked the end of Ali’s liver complications. Most of her fight came in the first seven months of her life. Throughout the months that followed the transplant, Ali was in and out of the hospital a handful of times but hasn’t had a significant stay since she was 3 years old.

Lawrence pediatrician Beth Rundquist, who has worked with Ali since she was in first grade, said liver transplants have become more and more successful throughout the years because the technical aspect has become less complicated. Rundquist also said the way Ali and her family handled the situation worked wonders.

“She is just a healthy, healthy girl,” Rundquist said. “You’d never know something used to be wrong with her. She’s a text book case, the kind of case you’d like to say you did.”

Rundquist also said Ali may have benefited from having the transplant at such a young age, even if the entire process was delicate because of the tiny size of her seven-month-old liver.

“(Infants) do well with transplants, largely because the immature immune system can help them,” Rundquist said. “When they’re that young, the body doesn’t always recognize things as foreign and can handle them a little better.”

Throughout the years, Michelle Jacobsen has put together a scrapbook chronicling Ali’s life. It includes all of the usual stuff – baby pictures, family photos, year-by-year recaps of her progression in school – and has a section devoted to her transplant. That’s how Ali remembers what she went through. And even though she was far too young to remember a single thing about life’s first opponent, competing at the Transplant Games is a reminder of what she overcame and how lucky she has been.

“It’s weird to look at it,” Ali said of the scrapbook. “It’s kind of amazing, look at me then and look and me now.”