Name: Deanna Arnold and Mark Dewey

Age: Deanna is 27 and Mark is 28

Transplant: Deanna - liver, 1992
Mark - Bone Marrow, 1989

Team: Team Massachusettes/Rhode Island

Hometown: Deanna - born in Queensbury NY, now lives in Cape Cod
Mark - South Yarmouth

Event(s): Deanna: Track and Field (5K) and Swimming (50 M Freestyle)
Mark - Bowling (Individual) and Badminton

Deanna Arnold and Marc Dewey are two transplant recipients in whose herats the Transplant Games hold a special place. They met and fell in love at the 1994 U.S. Transplant Games in Atlanta and are now planning a wedding for the spring of 1997. Deanna, 26, received a liver transplant in 1992 after two days of suffering from acute laiver failure. While her transplant was successful, she had to undergo months of rehabilitation to re-learn basic skills such as talking, walking, reading and dressing because of the brain damage that occurred during a comma induced by the liver failure. Today the girl who was once believed to be a "vegetable for life" is a bright, articulate college student studying accounting -- and bridal magazines.

Marc, 27, defied the odds against leukemia when he received a bone marrow transplant from an unrelated donor in 1989. He now works as a radiation therapist out of a tremendous desire to give back to give bak to the medical community that saved his life and to help other cander patients to whom he feels he an offer support and a keen understanding of their suffering and the long road to recovery.

Deanna and Marc live together in Cape Cod. They are atively training for the upcoming U.S. Transplant Games where Deanna plans to participate in the swimming event and road race and Marc will enter the badminton, bowling and track competitions.

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Last modified: 11 May 2000