By Beth Cassidy
Enterprise Record

Wendell Sain’s cell phone rings, and during the conversation, he says to the person on the other end, “If you need anything, just holler.”
His daughter just shakes her head.
“What?” Sain asks her, his eyes open wide. “I’m still capable of doing a few things.”
This time, she smiles.
It’s hard for Sain and his daughter Elizabeth Snow to realize the man who has spent a lifetime doing things for other people now needs their help. And that’s something Sain struggles with every day.
“I’m a giver, not a receiver. It’s hard for me to accept help,” Sain admits.
But Sain does need help. And he needs it fast.
After a fall at work about five years ago, when he thought his biggest problem was a few broken ribs, Sain was told he has NASH – nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or cirrhosis of the liver, and the only way he can get better is if he gets a new liver. He said when the doctor told him that he needed a new liver, he was shocked. He’d had no symptoms and felt fine, but NASH is called the silent liver disease because most people who have it don’t know it.
But Sain, who is the baby of the family and will be 53 on Christmas Eve, wasn’t completely in the dark about the disease. His brother, Sanford, was diagnosed with it and received a new liver about eight years ago. His sister, Dianne, has received the same diagnosis, and another sister, Lynn, refuses to be tested.
Sanford, who lives in Statesville, is doing great …