From the archives: Farmingville woman gets partial liver donation

This story was originally published in Newsday on March 16, 2005.

As a first-time visitor to the United States, Raniero Marti came to New York with a list of places he wanted to see: the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, Yankee Stadium.

But instead of eating knishes and strolling through Times Square, Marti's Big Apple tour started with blood tests, CT scans and psychological evaluations and graduated to giving up most of his liver - all to help a woman he barely knows.

On Thursday, Marti donated 60 percent of his liver to Maria Buccellato of Farmingville, the mother of his companion, Mi- rella DiBona. With no other matches among family members, Buccellato, who suffers from hepatitis C, faced almost certain death, doctors said.

"I'm grateful to him," Buccellato, who is originally from Sicily, said in Italian from her hospital bed at New York University Medical Center in Manhattan. "He gave me life."

Two years ago, Buccellato, 66, who worked as a seamstress, began to notice fatigue, leg swelling and other indicators of health problems. She was diagnosed with hepatitis C, a disease doctors believe she may have contracted through a blood transfusion in the 1970s.

She began treatment but the drugs didn't help and she didn't meet the requirements to receive a transplant from a deceased donor. Relatives were tested but none was a match.

Then Marti stepped up.

"He volunteered," said DiBona, 36, who has lived in Italy for years and with Marti for 2 1/2. "I didn't want to ask him. You can't ask something like this."

Marti, who lives in Livorno and works as a painter at a U.S. military base, Camp Darby, said he knew the risks of surgery and still wanted to help Buccellato, whom he had seen only on a few occasions. "If I wouldn't have done it, I wouldn't have been able to live with myself," Marti, 34, said in Italian, translated by DiBona.

The cure rate for hepatitis C is 52 to 58 percent and the disease is reversible if caught early enough, said Melissa Palmer, the Plainview hepatologist who treated Buccellato. Unfortunately, she said, it is a silent disease, and its symptoms are often vague or undetectable. It is also slow, taking 20 years or more to progress to the stage of cirrhosis. Liver transplants such as Buccellato's have an 85 percent success rate, Palmer said.

Marti was tested to ensure the livers would match. "It's a much more difficult operation than donating a kidney," said Lewis Teperman, director of transplantation at NYU medical center.

Buccellato's conditioned suddenly worsened several weeks ago. "Another week and we wouldn't have made it," Teperman said. "It was a rush between the Almighty and the clock." The two 8-to-10-hour operations were performed three hours apart, in case complications arose. Once the four doctors, including Teperman, were done, the waiting began. "It's truly one of those things where only time will tell," Teperman said.

The pair appear to be adapting well. Buccellato said she is feeling better, and Marti is due to be released from intensive care today. Teperman, who called Marti a hero, said his liver should regenerate back to its normal size within a year.

More than 5,000 liver transplants were performed in the United States in 2003, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, with more than 17,000 still waiting for an organ.

DiBona said she and Marti have plans for when he leaves the hospital: "The first thing we're going to do is go to the Empire State Building."