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Couple faces lung transplant, Lou Gehrig's disease


Dodgeball tournament to benefit Schlabach couple


PUBLISHED: Wednesday, January 31, 2007
By Chad Frey
Newton Kansan

Now that Treva again has the breath to cheer her husband Gene Schlabach on in a game of softball, his playing days are over.
Brought to an end by a disease that also ended the career of one of the greatest New York Yankees of all time and now bears the players name — Lou Gehrig’s disease, also know as ALS.

“The prognosis varies for everyone with ALS,” Gene said. “But there is no cure. It is a progressive disease. There are people who live 20 years, and people who don’t make it past two or three years.”



Treva Schlabach underwent a double lung transplant this year, and her husband Gene was diagnosed with Lou Gerhig’s disease. Prestressed Concrete — where Gene Schlabach has worked for almost 37 years — is helping sponsor a dodgball tournament Feb. 11, which will have men’s, co-ed and youth divisions. For more information, call Richard Martinez at home at 283-9574 or on his cell phone at 871-0490.
Photo By: David Dinell






Learning he had ALS late last year wasn’t the only hurdle the Newton couple had to negotiate, either. Treva Schlabach underwent transplant surgery, replacing both of her lungs.
“It’s been a year full of highs and lows,” she said.

And expenses. Lots of expenses. To help the couple, some of Gene Schlabach’s coworkers at Prestressed Concrete have created a dodgeball tournament Feb. 11 at the Newton Recreation Center.

Each team will pay a fee for participation in the tournament. There will be shirt sales, and if organizer Richard Martinez can get all the i’s dotted and T’s crossed, food sales that day as well.

“I want us to raise as much as we can,” Martinez said. “I haven’t set a goal, just to raise as much as we can.”

Martinez said dodgeball was chosen for two reasons — first, it’s an indoor game that almost everyone knows how to play, and second, it hasn’t really been used as a fund-raiser before.

If she could, Treva would pick up a ball and get a team together for the tournament.



Photo By: David Dinell






“I used to love to play dodgeball as a kid,” she said.
But right now, it’s not an option. She’s recovering from her August transplant — a transplant she waited nearly a year for after being added to a waiting list.

She spent most of 2006 living in St. Louis, awaiting her new lungs. She was struggling with Chronic Obstructed Pulmonary Disease.

“I couldn’t bend over, walk up the stairs, run a vacuum or carry in the groceries,” Treva Schlabach said. “My lung function was at about 19 percent.”

She wasn’t allowed to be by herself as she waited for a pair of lungs to become available. Visits from her children, Gene and other family helped her pass the time.

But she kept waiting, paying rent, food and utilities on a second home.

In August she got the call — telling her there were a pair of lungs available. A donor had finally been found.

“Organ donation is really important,” Treva said. “One healthy donor can help up to 70 people.”

It was while the couple, married since 2000, was apart Gene Schlabach began to have trouble walking and getting around.

His coworkers thought he was having back trouble and begged him to see a chiropractor.

“When you see a man for 15 years and play ball against him — to see him walking the way he did, you wonder about his back,” Martinez said.

He responded by going to see a doctor, who sent him to another and then another. MRI’s showed he had a problem with a disc, yet other doctors were thinking something else.

“It just feelt like my legs were heavy,” Gene said. “It all started in my legs.”

He finally saw a neurological muscular specialist, and that’s when things began to come into focus.

In October he was diagnosed. It’s not yet clear how fast the disease is progressing.

“They can’t tell until he goes back in for some more testing,” Treva said.

He is now in the care of the Kansas University ALS Center.

For more information about the tournament, contact Martinez at 283-9574 or (316) 871-0490.