William Dougan

Bill and I have been married for thirty-three years this June. We have two sons, Michael, 32, (married to Janeva), and Andrew, 29, (married to Jaymee) We also have two grandsons, Thomas 8, Jacob 4, and a granddaughter, Claire due in August 2023. Bill has been a paramedic for over thirty-five years and a firefighter for twenty-three years. He has always been such a hard worker and a great partner to go through life with.

At sixteen, he became an EMT and volunteered at North Arlington EMS and at 18 he volunteered at Kearny EMS, both are in New Jersey. We met when he was eighteen and I was sixteen. He had such passion for the job. He was hired at University Hospital in Newark, NJ. He worked in many roles there: a dispatcher, an EMT, a paramedic, a supervisor, and then as their EMS Coordinator. Bill retired after twenty-seven years at University Hospital. He has also worked for the State of NJ EMS department but went back to University Hospital to finish his career there. During all these years he worked several other part-time jobs, such as a summer paramedic for Community Hospital, Nabisco Cookie factory in their medical office, instructor of CPR, ACLS, ALS, and adjunct facility at Atlantic-cape Community College paramedic program. In 2000, he was presented with the offer to go to the fire academy, and he took advantage of it.

He was always so proud of his father being a firefighter in Kearny,
NJ and this was a dream for him. After completing the fire academy, he volunteered for Pinewood Estates Fire in Barnegat, NJ for several years and worked at Cape May Fire seasonally. In 2012, after our older son Michael went to South Carolina to go to school we decided as a family to join him here. In October of 2012, he applied and interviewed at Midway Fire Rescue and was offered a job in November. In January 2013, he started at Midway Fire Rescue where he worked until his health started to decline.
In November 2020, received a call from his GI physician stating he had a lesion on his liver and was also in end-stage cirrhosis. He had fatty liver disease for years but within a brief time, it got much worse. In the beginning, he did not feel any difference, but as time went on, he began to get sicker, and work became much more difficult to do. In March 2022, he retired from his full-time position at Midway, and in May 2022 he started working part-time. During this time, he only worked a couple of shifts a month in the ambulance only. This all came to a halt in November 2022 when his physical health took a nosedive. During this time, his insomnia, lethargy, excruciating itchiness, loss of memory recall, and occasional confusion started and got to a point where he could not do much. We talked and decided it was time to really retire, it was no longer safe for him to continue the job he had done and loved for all these years. It was a hard decision but a necessary one.

Since November, it has been a roller coaster of events: admission to the hospital, multiple emergency room visits, days of medical testing and esophageal banding procedures to prevent bleeding. He has been a trooper through it all. We have recently found out he has been placed on the liver transplant list at the Medical University of South Carolina. We are hoping he gets a liver soon and can begin the road to recovery. He would like to return to the way he was before being stricken with liver disease, and more importantly, he is hoping to be more involved with our grandchildren.

Family and friends of William Dougan are raising money for the nonprofit Help Hope Live to fund uninsured medical expenses associated with transplantation.

William has chosen to fundraise for Help Hope Live in part because Help Hope Live assures fiscal accountability of funds raised and tax deductibility for contributors. Contributors can be sure donations will be used to pay or reimburse medical and related expenses. To make a tax-deductible donation to this fundraising campaign, click on the Give button.

For more information, please contact Help Hope Live at 800.642.8399.

Thank you for your support!