From Hospital Stays to Home Plate: Justice Williams’ Liver Transplant with Miami Transplant Institute

By: Ruelle Champion

Justice Williams is like most other teenage boys—obsessed with sports. What sets the 15-year-old apart from is the liver transplant surgery that changed his life in 2025.

Justice’s transplant journey started with yellow eyes, intense stomach aches, surgeries, gallstones, and hospitalizations almost every two weeks.

“We went to the Dominican Republic, and when we came back my stomach started hurting again,” Justice said. “I had to get a PICC line and to get nutrition through an IV.”

What initially seemed manageable quickly became a serious issue. Justice was diagnosed with primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC); a rare disease that causes the bile ducts to become inflamed and scarred. This causes bile to build up and can eventually damage the liver.

The condition kept Justice in the hospital with infections. In January 2025, he and his family were connected to the pediatric liver transplant team at Miami Transplant Institute (MTI), including gastroenterologists/transplant hepatologists Stefany Hernandez Benabe, MD, and Jessica Hochberg, MD, as well as with Caroline Almy, a nurse practitioner.

“One of the things we discovered is that Justice also had autoimmune hepatitis, meaning he had overlap syndrome,” said Dr. Hernandez Benabe. “The ongoing infections became the main indication that he needed a transplant.”

Justice’s overlap syndrome meant that his PSC and autoimmune hepatitis were both present. Due to the severity of his conditions, he was listed for a liver transplant.

“He was very sick,” Almy said. “But he was always positive and willing to do anything he could from a medical standpoint.”

The call came on August 3, 2025 with Akin Tekin, MD, a liver transplant surgeon at MTI, taking the lead on Justice’s surgery.

“When my mom got the call, she was crying,” Justice said. “I didn’t know how to feel.”

From the moment he woke up from the procedure, he was ready to sprint through recovery. He doesn’t remember any pain or discomfort but recalls wanting to get back to his normal life.

“Within a week, he was out of the intensive care unit and we were already talking about discharge,” Dr. Hernandez Benabe said. “He never said no to a challenge.”

The liver transplant gave Justice his childhood back.

“I’m grateful because I get to go back to school and do what I wasn’t allowed to do before,” he said.

Justice’s doctors said he took his post-transplant recovery seriously.

“He has such a positive attitude and took a sense of ownership of this journey that we don’t always see in kids his age,” Dr. Hernandez Benabe said. “His recovery has been great.”

After experiencing much of middle school in and out of the hospital, Justice now gets to start high school without the medical issues that plagued his pre-teen years. He’s been able to travel with family but most importantly,—return to his beloved baseball.

“This experience gave me a different level of maturity that I’m grateful for,” Justice said. “With my family supporting me, I was able to stay positive and reach the light at the end of the tunnel.”