By Danny Gallagher

Canadian Baseball Network

Say a prayer for Bob Sebra.

If you thought your life was tough sometimes, think of Sebra, a pitcher for the Expos in 1986-87.

In very short order in the matter of only several weeks, Sebra is going to undergo a doozy of an operation that hopefully might improve his quality of life.

Seven years after undergoing a liver transplant caused by hepatitis, Sebra will have his body overhauled with a muliti-visceral transplant. He said he will have his liver, pancreas, spleen, stomach and part of his mall and large intestine transplanted at the Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami.

"It's a 16-hour procedure. It's the most complicated surgery known to man, '' Sebra was telling me from his home in Ormond Beach, Fla.

We often hear of kidney and live transplants but a multi-organ transplant for Sebra is very unusual. We wish Sebra good luck in his journey. What he faces sound complicated, ugly and scary.

Sebra said he was told 90% of patients who undergo this gruelling operation survive one year but he added that there’s not enough data to get a prognosis of life span. Jackson Memorial is said to be the third-largest hospital in the U.S. with more than 1,500 beds and specializes in life-saving operations, among other procedures.

Sebra, 57, said blood clots and portal hypertension issues have caused all of these ugly problems.

"I found out not even a month ago that I was going to have it. I had tests done and the doctors said I was a good candidate because I'm tall and they say a lot of people come in there in wheelchairs and have tubes coming out of them,'' Sebra said. "After the operation, they will keep my body open for 48 hours to check to see if all the connections have been made and then they will close me back up.

"It's going to be a tough year but anybody that knows me knows I'm going to go down fighting. I will fight my ass off.’’

Sebra was 5-5 with the Expos in 1986 and was a tough-luck 6-15 with a team-leading 157 strikeouts in 1987 when the team almost made the playoffs. He also pitched for the Rangers, Reds, Phillies and Brewers during a big-league career that ended in 1990.