I Hate Dialysis Message Board

Dialysis Discussion => Dialysis: Transplant Discussion => Topic started by: okarol on November 16, 2007, 03:52:47 PM

Title: Looking for donor family
Post by: okarol on November 16, 2007, 03:52:47 PM

From my friend Karen:

"Hi all:  I never got the chance to meet my donor family.  Back in 1972, everything was confidential and then when I did try in 2004, all records are destroyed after 15 years.  Back then, donor families lived within city limits.  I had several people trying to find them as well as myself leaving messages on donor sites.  But the door kept closing.  I have written a poem in honor of all you Heros and Angels out there who gave the gift of life and living.

      My first transplant over 34 years ago was at UC Medical Center San Francisco 11/6/72.  I was 16 at the time and all that they told me was my donor was younger than me killed in a vehicle accident.  So, if anyone out there knows of a family that lived in the San Francisco Bay Area that lost a child in a car accident early November 1972 and the family selflessly gave their son organs to help others to live, love  and laugh once again, please let me know weddick@COMCAST.NET. Now on to your poem and I thank you all and love you all with all of my kidney."

*In Honor of My Donor Family*

I received a gift back in ’72
It came from someone I never knew.

It came with no card, ribbon or bows
But sent to me that’s all I know.

It didn’t arrive in a box or sack
And is a gift one would never send back.

The gift in size is rather small
Compared to its power to conquer all.

You’ll never hold this gift in your hand
It’s given to people throughout the land...

This beautiful gift has set me free
What a precious gift and given to me.

This gift was given out of selfless love
And delivered to me with help from above.

These gifts are so priceless, valuable and few
When you know of this gift, you will agree too.

With this gift I can hold my head high
To dream the impossible and reach for the sky.

This gift has taught me to scream and shout
Now let me tell you what this gift is about.

This gift will not be taken in strife
The gift I speak of is that of life.

The gift of life handed me a key
It opened doors and set me free.

Organs aren’t needed at your final destination
Leave them on Earth without hesitation.

Every human will someday be called to come home
Your organs may stay and continue to roam.

No need for organs in the heavens above
Leave them on Earth for others to live & love.

Now that all has been said and done
Please donate your organs and give life to one.

Let’s spread the news let’s scream and shout
Organ donation is what it’s all about!
                   ***

Title: Re: Looking for donor family
Post by: goofynina on November 16, 2007, 05:16:26 PM

 :clap; :clap; :clap;  Beautifully done, this says it all  :clap; :clap; :clap;  And is her kidney still working from 1972?  That is fantastic (if it is) :)

Title: Re: Looking for donor family
Post by: okarol on November 16, 2007, 05:34:28 PM

Quote from: goofynina on November 16, 2007, 05:16:26 PM

:clap; :clap; :clap;  Beautifully done, this says it all  :clap; :clap; :clap;  And is her kidney still working from 1972?  That is fantastic (if it is) :)

Actually there's more to her story - here's the newspaper article:

Husband's kidney donation to his wife a true test of love

Oakland Tribune,  Mar 12, 2007 

KAREN WEDDICK knows her husband loves her.

At least, in theory, she does.

Because Karen and Joel, they have the love story. A Friday night, a dimly lit restaurant, disco night at the bar. She's out with her friends and bored, he's out with his friends and on the prowl. He spots her across the dance floor. She spots him spotting her. The right song finally plays and two years later they're at an altar promising to have and to hold in sickness and in health.

It's been 22 years now since the day of Karen and Joel's union, and please pardon them the pun if they say their marriage has gone off without a hitch. They've raised two boys, Matthew, 19, and Brian, 17. They've enjoyed their careers. Karen's in nursing, and Joel is a lifer with Lockheed Martin. They've made a life in the Bay Area, in a modest ranch-style home in a Fremont cul-de-sac.

And all this time, they've never once had to cash in on those vows.

Until a year ago, that is, when Karen's kidney began to fail.

Karen, 49, didn't know her one working kidney would fail. Though she received a kidney transplant at age 16, no one ever told her it would eventually run out of gas. But after squeezing 35 years of use out of the thing, probably 29 more years than the typical 1972 kidney transplant, failing it was. And Karen was looking at a six- year wait for a donor kidney, most likely from a cadaver.

In the meantime, Karen would return to the painful and tedious dialysis of her teen years -- the scars of which are still visible on her arms today -- just to stay alive.

Statistics aren't kind

Would Karen last long enough on dialysis to get a kidney? Probably. Maybe. No one could say. But statistics aren't kind to someone in her predicament. Each day, 18 people die while waiting for a transplant of a vital organ, such as a heart, liver, kidney, pancreas, lung or bone marrow. And in 2005, 3,198 kidney patients died waiting for a transplant.

That wasn't how Joel and Karen wanted their love story to end. So Joel suggested to Karen that he find out if he could give her one of his kidneys.

"Once I was sure nothing was going to happen to me, I had no problem donating my kidney to Karen," says Joel, 46. "If I had any more organs to donate and someone I loved really needed it, I would do it in an instant."

In January, after months of testing at Stanford Hospital and Clinics, doctors finally gave Joel and Karen their approval. Their surgeries -- to remove one of Joel's kidneys and place it in Karen - - was scheduled for Feb. 14.

"For Valentine's Day, my soulmate is giving me the best gift ever -- the gift of life," says Karen. "I mean, how do you thank someone for something like this?"

A husband's gift

No one ever knows what dominoes will fall after one fateful glance across a bar. It's chaos theory. The butterfly effect.

A butterfly flaps its wings in the rain forest and sometime later a tornado tears through Texas. A guy gives a girl the eye on a Friday night at the Fremont Black Angus in 1982 and 24 years later he's in the pre-anesthesia room saying a final goodbye to life with two kidneys. "That's the big question," says Joel. "Would I have stuck around knowing what I do today? Yes."

Joel's words aren't spoken lightly; Karen's kidney issues have always loomed in the background of their lives. Especially when Karen thought it might prevent her from having children.

"Close to the time that I proposed, she got all upset thinking that she may not be able to have children, and she didn't want to tie me down in a relationship," says Joel. "After (their conversation) I hung up, I got in the car and drove over to her house. She was kind of shocked when I arrived. And she completely broke down when I told her that I love her for who she is, not what she could give me."

Eventually that issue became moot. Karen was able to bear children, and the family of four lived their lives not really thinking about any health issues, let alone kidney troubles.

But then, in the fall of 2005, Karen got sick. Really sick.

She became terribly tired. She developed excruciating joint pain. Her normal after-work walks around Lake Elizabeth left her limp with fatigue.

"I was like, 'Whew -- what is wrong with me?'" says Karen. "The energy was just sucked out of me."

After tests revealed that Karen's red and white blood cell counts were plummeting, her physicians initially feared leukemia. They hypothesized that taking immunosuppressant drugs for more than 34 years to prevent Karen's body from rejecting her transplanted kidney had brought it on.

In December of 2005, Karen took a turn for the worse. Her bone marrow, the doctors said, was in a virtual coma and wasn't producing red and white blood cells. In an attempt to kick-start it, doctors tried taking Karen off one of her anti-rejection drugs, a medication called Imuran. Though it worked, and her bone marrow came out of hibernation, Karen still wasn't feeling well. Days later, she was hospitalized for nausea and vomiting.

It proved to be an unlucky, yet lucky development. Karen's gallbladder was full of sludge and had to be removed. But in the process, her doctors also realized her creatinine levels were elevated, indicating a reduced level of kidney function. A battery of blood tests later, it was official: Karen's kidney was shutting down.

Karen couldn't process the information at first.

"I said, 'No.' I just said no. This isn't happening," says Karen. "I was in denial."

The transplant dilemma

These days, there are two kinds of kidney transplants. There are kidneys that come from unrelated donors who have died, called non- living donors, and there are kidneys that come from living donors.

In 1972, Karen Weddick, like most kidney transplant patients at the time, received a kidney from a non-living donor.

"They said I was an easy match," says Karen, who as a teen took BART from her Fremont home to San Francisco, where she'd get her dialysis treatments at San Francisco General Hospital. "I'll never forget the day they found one, either. They had these old elevators, you know, the kind with two doors? Well, as the second door was opening, the dialysis technician was all excited. He said they'd found a kidney. And right away, they took me away in this special shuttle."

Details about the donor were slim. It was a boy. He was younger than she. He'd been killed in a car crash.

"I did everything I could to find those people," says Karen. "If I could show them what they gave me, that they allowed me to finish high school, to become a nurse, to meet a man... somebody's son lost his life, but gave me mine."

Since 1972, the science of organ transplantation has changed. Whereas deceased donors were once overwhelmingly favored in kidney transplants -- despite the fact the world's first kidney transplant from a living donor took place in 1954 -- the number of living donors is slowly increasing. In 2005, 6,570 kidney transplants came from living donors, while 6,700 came from deceased donors.

Still, of living donors, spousal living donors are the minority. And when doctors gave Joel and Karen the go-ahead, they joined a select population. While 29 percent of living kidney donors in 2005 were either parent or offspring, 24 percent were siblings and 20 percent were unrelated, only 11 percent of living kidney donors were spouses.

That's just 720 people. In a country with a population of more than 298 million.

Still, Joel and Karen's doctors assured them that success rates between spousal donors were high.

"They said there's something about married couples -- the longer you've been together, the greater success type of thing," says Karen. "The best of course, is if you had a twin, or a sibling. But my husband, I wasn't going to ask. He just stepped up and said he wanted to do it."

Lucky 14

Anyone who knows the Weddicks knows there's this thing about them and the number 14. They met on May 14, 1982. They were engaged on May 14, 1983. They were married on April 14, 1984. They wish each other a happy anniversary every time the day of the calendar turns 14, regardless of the month.

So it's pretty much a given that Karen thinks it's kismet that on surgery day, Joel is in the pre-anesthesia room and lying in Bed 14. On Feb. 14.

She loops her index finger through Joel's identification bracelet and points with her free hand at the stenciled tiles above Joel's gurney.

"Look! It couldn't be more perfect!" says Karen.

"Well, stand up and kiss me, then," says Joel.

Moments later, it's time. As Joel is wheeled out toward the operating room, Karen stands and offers a small wave.

"Bye," she says.

By 1 p.m. on Valentine's Day, Karen had received Joel's kidney. It started working as soon as the doctors hooked it up and by the time Karen was wheeled into recovery, where she was met by Joel's mother, her entire being was flushed with new life.

"Once Karen got a working kidney, she perked right up," says Joel, who's now at home, finishing up the six weeks of leave he took from work for the surgery. "My mom said that as soon as Karen got back to her room, you could see that her eyes were much brighter than they'd been before."

All is not yet perfect, of course. Karen is on 22 different medications, some of which, over time, will probably be discontinued. And Joel, who's lost 10 pounds, was extremely uncomfortable until his incisions began to heal.

But neither is complaining.

"When Karen and I got married, we gave ourselves to each other spiritually," says Joel. "Now I have given her part of me physically."

It's true love, nods Karen.

"You know, I would have totally understood if he didn't want to do this," says Karen. "He's given me so much already. But we're going to support each other. I'm going to get healthy again and get back on life. It's a steep hill we've climbed together and now we're almost at the top. It'll be a good ride to get over with."

Contact Bay Area Living writer Candace Murphy at cmurphy@angnewspapers.com or (925) 416-4814.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20070312/ai_n18713339

Title: Re: Looking for donor family
Post by: goofynina on November 16, 2007, 05:48:08 PM

 :clap; Now this should be a movie on Lifetime, what a great and fantastic story (with a very happy ending)  But, the one thing i dont understand is if the immunosuppressants were shutting down her bone marrow, isnt she going to have to continue taking them with the new kidney?  Wouldnt that continue to make matters worse? Or was it just that one drug Imuran that caused the problems?  Regardless, she ended up being healthy and happy and that is all that matters :)  :clap;

Title: Re: Looking for donor family
Post by: boxman55 on November 17, 2007, 11:58:01 AM

I just read this, I just love stories like this. There are some amazing people out there...Boxman

Title: Re: Looking for donor family
Post by: tamara on November 17, 2007, 08:56:38 PM

Very groovy story !  :clap;

Title: Re: Looking for donor family
Post by: okarol on February 10, 2008, 10:02:08 PM

I just got an email from Karen - she sent me her surgical photos taken during the transplant from her husband Joel.
I will posting them tomorrow. First though, I wanted to post the poem she wrote about her husband:

My Husband My Donor My Hero My Life

We first met on May 14, 1982,
That night my dreams
Began to come true.

I had a feeling,
I’d never felt before.
I knew I wanted,
To get to know him more.

I felt there was something,
Very special about him.
I sure was hoping
I’d see him again.

When he did call,
And we planned our first date,
I was so excited,
I could hardly wait.

I learned more about his personality,
On that first date,
It was then I knew,
He could possibly be my sole mate.

He proposed to me
On May 14, 1983.
It was such a wonderful,
Exciting & overwhelming
Time for me.

Of course I said: “Yes”
Without hesitation &
Absolutely no reservations.

We married on April 14, 1984,
Little did we know then?
What life would have in store?

Our lives became richer,
With the birth of our sons.
They’ll always be loved,
And our priority number one!

Joel has always done
The best that he can.
This is what has makes him
Such an incredible man.

Our life was perfect,
For quite awhile.
Then things began to happen
That took away my smile.

It was late 2005
When I was told,
I would need a new kidney
Because my first was growing old.

As I became ill,
And no longer felt fine,
A new kidney was needed &
Joel said: “I want to give you mine”.

Test after test
Procedure after procedure
It all seemed to go on forever.
Joel went through quite an endeavor.

It took a long time.
But, at last we were told:
“Everything was fine;
Joel’s kidney could be mine”.

It was now 2007
On Valentine’s Day.
When Joel gave me his kidney.
And I’m here to say:

Joel, you are my hero
In every sense of the word.
You are my hero
& I want it heard.

You’ve always been there
When I needed you most.
You took away my fears,
And dried my tears.

My favorite song to sing is
You are the wind beneath my wings.
You’ve always been my rock,
And strong backbone,
When I was feeling weak & all alone.

You gave me the Gift of Life,
You are my loving Living Donor
& I am your loving healthy wife.

You’ve always been a giving person,
This is just who you are, &
You’ll always be my shinning star.

I owe you my life
I can literally say.
I will care for this precious gift
& thank you each & everyday.

I look forward to the
Next chapter of our life together.
It can only be bright
& better than ever.

Joel, as you already know
I love you very much.
You are my life and
I am proud to be your wife.

We’ll be together now &
Forever, then into our
Final destiny, this is the way
It was meant to be,
I for you & you for me!

Thank you Joel for the person you are,
You have taken my hand
And together we have traveled far.

I thank God for sending you my way,
I thank God each and every day.
There is so much more I want to say,
But, I’ll save that for another day.

I love you Joel,
I thank you for you!
Thank you for being
My dream come true!

Where there is love
There is life
Donate life &
Feel the love.

~ by Karen Weddick

Title: Re: Looking for donor family
Post by: Joe Paul on February 10, 2008, 11:26:04 PM

 :thumbup; Very nice peom, thanks for sharing it Karol