Kidney Mama

Jim Kintz first heard about Lauren Davis’ need for  a kidney transplant from her dad while Lauren’s band was onstage.

“I thought, this is something I could do,” Kintz said.

The next morning, while Kintz prayed at Innovation Church in Cresco over the situation, Davis walked in.

“I’m going to give you a kidney,” he told her.

“I was shocked,” Davis said. “It was unexpected.”

How did Jim  know he would match, you ask. Well, Jim knew about paired donations. He signed up with Lauren at Johns Hopkins for a kidney swap. He donated a kidney to someone; someone donated to Lauren, and somehow, according to the article, there was a kidney leftover for the UNOS list. Maybe it was one of those loaves and fishes deals.

Kintz said when he first heard about the paired match program he thought “I just felt God was telling me I could do this.”

His reasons for donating? Simple.

“Why not? I have two kidneys. I’ve been tremendously blessed all my life with healthy children and grandchildren. I can give back this way.”

Congrats!

A kidney transplant swap recently brought together Satish and Ashalata Sapkale, and Farzana and Nadeem Inhonvi.

Each woman was willing to donate a kidney to her husband but was not a match. They signed up for a paired donation list at their transplant center in India, and doctors began working out a kidney swap: Ashalata would donate a kidney to Nadeem, and in exchange, Farzana would give a kidney to Satish.

“It’s great to see how four people can come together and help save two lives. We are lucky we found a match and my brother could get a new kidney. We were just two families who could help each other, differences of religion were never on either of our minds,” said Satish’s brother Uday Sapkale, 38.

Great news. Congratulations to all!

Flavia and Bill Walton were part of a very large kidney swap, involving 14 donor-recipient pairs.

“To see someone that you love most [in] the world deteriorate is a sense of helplessness and powerlessness that you just cannot comprehend unless you’ve been there. But to be able to do something is so empowering, but it is such a blessing,” says Flavia.

And good for them. These swaps are bringing healthy kidneys from living donors to patients. Kidneys from living donors are less likely to fail and tend to last twice as long as kidneys from deceased donors.

Kidney swaps bring donors to the table who in all likelihood would never have donated a kidney otherwise. Yet the expert in this article says that he worries swaps will push people on the list farther down and make them wait longer.

“We at least want to be fair with the people on the wait list who don’t have a family member available. Being fair might mean waiting a trivial extra amount of time, but we certainly don’t want to make those people wait years extra just because of the swap arrangements,” says Professor Robert Veatsch of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University.

It doesn’t seem like there is an ethical issue here. If the donors in a chain donation are all friends and relatives of kidney patients, everyone gets a kidney from someone who was probably never going to be an altruistic donor for a stranger on the UNOS list.

And a lot of swaps start with an altruistic donor, who in theory, could have gone to the next person on the official list and donated there. But what happens in swaps that begin with a stranger is that a kidney at the other end of the chain does go to someone on the list.

Veatsch, whom I don’t mean to pick on, raises another very typical ethical concern about kidney donation, that compensation such as a tax break “taints altruism.”

I don’t feel tainted when I deduct my donation to a charity. How is a tax break for donating an organ any different?

It is important to think through the ethics of what we do, but our primary ethical obligation is to save lives and get out of the way of people who would like to do it. I am hoping that as we sort through these new ways to get an organ, that happens more and more.

This just in from Robyn Wheatley, who donated a kidney to a stranger earlier this month and wrote this essay on July 23.

Yesterday I met the man who now has my left kidney. He had no idea who I was prior to our meeting yesterday, and I had no idea who he was. We were strangers. For both of us, I am confident in saying, our identities and what we looked like did not matter. But, we are no longer strangers. With tears of joy, he and I hugged and exchanged a nervous greeting and shared an appreciation for what had just happened not yet a week prior. His life has been changed in obvious ways, but this process has indeed changed my life in less obvious ways; it has made me re-evaluate the value I place on my own life and relationships.

I will be processing this for some time to come. But I’m getting ahead of myself with the story.

On Thursday, July 15, I donated one of my kidneys to a complete stranger, starting off a chain for a kidney swap. (See The Alliance for Paired Donation for more information on how altruistic donor chains work.) I had the surgery at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Very simply, I did this because I can. The decision I made had come after a lot of research and consultation, and much time and effort.

I was inspired to start this process back in March as I read the story of another local man’s recent decision to donate a kidney to a cashier at a food store he frequented over the years. He learned of the woman’s progressively deteriorating health and was made aware of her kidney disease. She had exhausted all possibilities with family members and close friends-no one was a match. The man offered to get evaluated as a potential donor. It turns out that he matched her well, and the rest is history. The woman gets to live a longer, fuller life of many years and will no longer be subjected to the torture of dialysis. That was all I needed to hear. After doing some initial research (of which there is a plethora) I called Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s kidney transplant program. Their reputation precedes them.

I do understand and appreciate that what I have done is unusual. It is not for everyone. As I have shared this news with people I received wonderful support and encouragement; there have been a few looks of puzzlement; and, lastly, there have been many who still can’t seem to wrap their heads around why it is I would choose to donate one of my kidneys to someone whose identity is unknown to me, not a family member, not a friend, not even an acquaintance. Regardless of the response, I know that all of the comments come from a place of love and concern, and include people very dear to me.

The transplants were “successful,” and both recipients are doing well. It turns out all of us in both pairings live near and within Chicago’s city limits, and we are all in our 30s. The recipient of my kidney laughed and said that his girlfriend, who coincidentally donated her kidney to the recipient in the second pair, when it was found that she was not a match for my recipient, was certain that his donor would be a woman. Well, he said, “she was right.” As we walked out of the transplant center today I said, “Don’t be surprised if you cry more easily now; that may be my influence. I am known to be openly emotional.” He assured me he’d take good care of his new, healthy kidney, and I was certain he would – never a doubt, not really something I even pondered to be honest. If anyone would not take a healthy transplanted kidney for granted, it’s someone like these two recipients who have each spent years on dialysis not knowing when, where or if a transplant would ever be a possibility.

As I’m reflecting on the meeting with the recipient of my kidney and the woman in the second pairing I am wishing more people knew the facts about living kidney donation and how little effort was involved relative to the life-changing/life-saving that has been made possible with my left kidney. I would do this again in a heartbeat if I could. The transplant team did all of the hard work with comprehensive evaluation of myself and matching with the recipient and pairs. My hard work came immediately after the surgery, if I can even call it hard work.

If I had more kidneys to donate I would do so, it is that powerful. The woman in the second pair of the chain had just had a difficult conversation with the transplant team; she was not sure she had many options left. But, as an altruistic living donor in the equation I was able to indirectly give her back quality and quantify to her life; it has given her back hope and future possibilities. What a small price I paid. My one-pound kidney represents so much more than just an organ and returned functionality to another; it is a gift that my body was able to provide-it is life. And, the gift is not just from me to the then-stranger in need, it is to me as well. It’s reaffirming, makes me want to appreciate my life and everyone I have in it with me, something that’s not come so easily in the recent past.

Words seem inadequate to describe the experience. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or if you are looking to converse with someone who has been through the process: robynwheatley@yahoo.com

Loyola’s hospital has a kidney transplant program it calls “Pay-It-Forward.” You get a kidney transplant, then someone you know donates a kidney to the next person in line and so on.

Lillian Rosa received a kidney transplant at the end of June through the program, and in return, her husband, Jose, donated a kidney to Ben Carnivele.

Jose, a police officer, looked at the Pay-It-Forward kidney transplant program like this:

“This is going to open a lot of doors for a lot of people out there. You don’t have to wait until there’s an accident and somebody dies. If a lot of people came forward and did what I’m doing, it would save a lot of lives.”

The transplants are the 14th and 15th in the program, which began in April. This is big.

At the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics, eight people are recovering from a four-way kidney transplant swap. It went a little something like this:

Daniel Fabisiak, 43, of DeForest received a kidney from Lois Chupp, 52, of Richland Center.

In turn, Fabisiak’s wife, Kelly, 42, donated a kidney to Carl Vitale, 48, of New York.

Vitale’s brother, Marc, 43, who lives in Madison, donated a kidney to Susan Rader, 57, who lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Rader’s son, John Rader, 32, who also lives in the U.P., donated his kidney to Michael Olson, 32, of McFarland. Chupp is a friend and co-worker of Olson’s mother-in-law.

And from another article about the transplants:

“I have a peace about it,” said Chupp, who is married with two grown sons. “When we matched I just knew that this was what I needed to do.” …

“I saw my life come back, a renewed life,” Fabisiak said about Chupp’s donation, while choking back tears. “Our family views her as an angel and savior because they’re getting their dad back and husband back.”

Congrats to all!

Lots of people made a recent 14-kidney transplant swap come together. First, the family of Jennifer Whitford, who decided to donate her kidneys when she was tragically killed.

One of those kidneys went to Ralph Wolfe’s wife, Brenda, taking Ralph off the hook for donating in a planned swap. But just as on a recent episode of transplant drama “Three Rivers,” Ralph said, “Nope. People are counting on me. I’m donating anyway.”

That decision facilitated 13 more transplants.

“Who was I to say a precious daughter died and gave my wife life, and I’m going to hold on to this kidney just in case?” he said just after meeting Gary Johnson, who now has his kidney.

Said Gary:

“Tomorrow, no dialysis. I love Ralph.”

I love Ralph, too. Congratulations to everyone involved in these kidney transplants.

“You know it’s just a little bit of pain to save someone’s life and I feel like everyone should be more willing to give,” said Tamara Greene.

Tamara, 23, decided a while back that she wanted to donate a kidney to someone, anyone, in need. She signed up with Tulane’s transplant program and ended up being the key to creating a three-kidney transplant chain.

“My uncle has renal failure and because he was on the list for so long he can’t have a transplant now, because he needs a heart, a pancreas, and two kidneys. So just knowing that if there are more people that were willing to give, he could have been saved. All the trouble and all the hurt, it’s just something that I feel like we can do,” said Greene.

Renee Credeur Bergeron received Tamara’s kidney.

“Until sickness really affects your family, you really don’t understand the impact that it has on your life. It completely changes you life and we need donors. And I have two young kids and I didn’t want to go on dialysis. So I’m very blessed, very blessed,” said Bergeron, voice cracking with tears in her eyes.

Good for you, Tamara! Congrats to all.

More and more hospitals are getting involved in paired kidney donations. (I donate to your friend; you donate to mine.) Jeananne Thomas’ local transplant center is still in the planning stages, but she donated a kidney to a stranger across the country so that her brother, Murray could get a kidney transplant.

Interesting article. Apparently there are a half-dozen separate paired donation registries that hospitals can affiliate with, possibly by region. (Wouldn’t you fly anywhere to save a loved one?)

Some matching networks, such as the one Rochester joined, prefer that the donors travel to the recipient’s city for surgery. Others, such as the National Kidney Registry, send the kidneys, unaccompanied, on ice in specially labeled white cardboard boxes on commercial flights. “They basically go in with the luggage,” Veale said of the precious cargo.

Yeah, I don’t even trust the airlines to deliver my actual luggage every time. Jeananne decided to make the flight; I would have, too. Congrats to the Thomases and everyone else involved in their five-kidney chain!

I was just talking to fellow living kidney donor Ms. Cara about what might happen if the medical community did more to put the word out about living donors, and here’s this article about Loyola’s Pay-It-Forward kidney donation program.

Since the hospital launched the program in March, 21 people have offered to be living kidney donors to strangers, potentially making 126 transplants possible through donor chains of mismatched friends and relatives.

If you build it, they will come.