Los Angeles resident Yvonne Dove never imagined she would experience a “once-in-a-lifetime” ride in the Rose Parade, especially after she was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2009.

Yvonne Dove has volunteered at Cedars-Sinai every week since receiving a new liver in 2012.
(photo courtesy of Cedars-Sinai)

“I was devastated,” said Dove, 65, who has four kids and seven grandchildren. “I went home and started crying. Then I realized there was nothing I could do about it but fight to stay on Earth, and that’s what I did.”

Dove was added to the liver transplant list shortly after her diagnosis, but said she wasn’t optimistic about her chances of getting a liver before time ran out. During her two-and-a-half years on the waiting list, she was called in to the hospital “six or seven times” for a potential match. Each time, she was sent home without a new liver due to compatibility issues.

In the meantime, she used faith, a support group and her social worker at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to help her endure treatments for cancer and Hepatitis C.

In 2012, Dove received a successful transplant. She’s been cancer-free ever since.

To illustrate the struggles of people with organ transplants, Cedars-Sinai is honoring Dove by appointing her as a rider on the Donate Life float at the Rose Parade on Jan. 2. She will also take part in a float decorating event at the Rose Bowl’s Brookside Pavilion on Dec. 29 from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Dove will be the first black float rider representing Cedars-Sinai after more than 10 years that the hospital has sponsored the float. Each year, members of the Comprehensive Transplant Center at Cedars-Sinai suggest patients who have experienced a heart, lung, kidney or liver transplant to be among the float’s riders.

The Donate Life float, established in 2004, also honors those who have died and saved lives by donating their organs through portraits made of floral materials.

“I really feel blessed that I was chosen,” said Dove, who, after recovering, started volunteering at Cedars-Sinai providing emotional support for pre- and post-transplant recipients. “This is a once in a lifetime thing for me. I’ve been telling everyone.”

Her family supported her from her diagnosis, through the frustration of waiting nearly three years for the transplant. Now they are celebrating the moment. Seeing the birth of her two great-grandchildren was made possible because of her life-saving procedure.

Dove also has a newfound interest in nutrition, to make sure she remains healthy.

She still volunteers two or three times every week, offering words of encouragement to patients facing daunting roads to recovery.

There are approximately 17,000 people currently waiting for a liver who have been medically approved for a transplant, according to the American Liver Foundation. New organs become available once a potential donor is declared brain dead.

Every year, more than 1,500 die before they receive a transplant.

Even when a patient receives a new liver, the one-year survival rate is 86 percent, and the three-year survival rate is 78 percent.

“I try to give them peace of mind,” Dove said. “I try to encourage them and let them know it’s going to be OK, because when I was going through the transplant I had a volunteer who did that for me, and I will never forget her.

“And I don’t know where I’d be if it wasn’t for Cedars,” she said. “Try to enjoy life. Live every day for today and try to treat people the way you’d like to be treated. Pay it forward.”