After many severe bouts of stomach pain from age 15, he was finally diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. In spite of severe symptoms over the years, of rapid weight loss, internal bleeding and fevers, he managed to play guitar, ski and earn his college and grad school degrees. However, his disease eventually took on a much deadlier life of its own. In 1987, he was diagnosed with primary sclerosing cholangitus; a rare complication that blocks the liver's bile ducts. Only 25, he was told his liver would fail in five to ten years. By 1993, his condition had deteriorated so dramatically that he had to live at the University of Nebraska Medical Center battling excruciating pain and dangerous infections while hoping for a new liver. One finally became available
and, at first, the prognosis was excellent. But a week after the transplant, it, too, began to fail. He went back to the organ donation waiting game, getting sicker every day and feeling like "the clock was really ticking".
Miraculously, another donor was found and, this time, the transplant was a
complete success. With anti-rejection medication a staple of his daily diet for life, he was discharged in two weeks, a full recovery within his grasp. Determined to educate the public about the urgent need for donors and to erase the stigma attached, he established the James Redford Institute for Transplant Awareness in 1995 and produced an award-winning HBO documentary,
The Kindness of Strangers (1998), that integrated the stories of transplant recipients and the families of the organ donors who lost their loved ones.
