I Hate Dialysis Message Board
Dialysis Discussion => Dialysis: News Articles => Topic started by: okarol on November 26, 2007, 11:21:44 AM
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Newsday.com
Merrick family gives thanks for kidney donation
BY NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON
nia.henderson@newsday.com
11:23 AM EST, November 26, 2007
The e-mail arrived at 10:52 p.m. on Feb. 16, and with four sentences the Dillons' lives were forever changed.
It was from a woman named Lisa and read, in part: "I . . . saw your flier looking for a kidney donor. While this is nothing that I had ever (seriously) considered, I am an organ donor and figured why wait 'til I'm dead."
The family's story first appeared in Newsday a year ago, and at that point they were poised to accept a kidney from a man who had come forward. But a few weeks after the article ran, his donation was nixed for medical reasons.
The Dillons tacked up fliers about their daughter's plight, and after seeing one at a tax preparer's office, Lisa offered a kidney. Her donation saved Alice Dillon's life.
"There's really nothing you can say to a person like that," said father Marty Dillon, 79, of Merrick. "She knew what she was doing for us and we knew what she was doing . . . It just brings me to tears."
Lisa, who lives in New Jersey, did not respond to several phone calls for comment, although the Dillons have kept in touch with her.
In November 2005, doctors found that Alice Dillon had declining kidney function.
Family members were tested, but no suitable donors were found.
So the Dillons cast a wider net, designing a Web site, posting fliers and telling folks about their daughter's plight. "For the whole year, it consumed us," Sue Dillon, 72, said.
Their campaign worked.
Strangers from as far away as Australia responded with offers.
On the day after Christmas last year, the family began chronicling the phone calls and e-mails they received in a red spiral notebook.
On Feb. 16, they found their match, their lifeline, in Lisa.
On June 13, after several rounds of tests, Dillon wrote: "She passed the tests and can go forward."
June 23: "Lisa called, all OK."
The surgery was scheduled for Sept. 5, just after Alice Dillon's 40th birthday.
The family had a pre-surgery/birthday party in their backyard.
A bigger celebration began when they went to Westchester County Medical Center in Valhalla on the day of the surgery. "When we went there and I saw her sitting there, I knew we were home," Marty Dillon said.
On Sept. 5, he wrote: "Transplant successfully completed."
Groggy for hours after the surgery, Alice Dillon said she "wondered if it were real or not" when she finally came around. "I was excited, happy, ecstatic," she recalled.
Alice, a food service worker at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, recently moved into her own apartment and she says her doctors say her prognosis is good.
And the Dillons say they are still getting phone calls about kidney donations, and they encourage others to become organ donors.
"Lisa is healthy, Alice is healthy and Lauren, we felt like she was a friend," Sue Dillon said, referring to Lauren Terrazzano, the late Newsday reporter who wrote the story about Alice on Nov. 25, 2006. "With her decision to write about us . . . she lives on."
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-lidill1127,0,5520145.story
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love it
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Beautiful story but i dont get it, wasnt this donor a "stranger" They make it sound so simple and easy but in all actuality there is so much left out of the story (at least i think so) Ah, i'm losing it :banghead; :urcrazy;
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Beautiful story but i dont get it, wasnt this donor a "stranger" They make it sound so simple and easy but in all actuality there is so much left out of the story (at least i think so) Ah, i'm losing it :banghead; :urcrazy;
Totally. I know that the transplant program I'm in asks a rigorous series of questions to donors to sniff out if they actually know the organ recipient. From what I understand (although I admit I may be incorrect since it's been awhile since I've read through the donor manual) they won't take altruistic donors - just family or friends.
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It depends on the transplant center. They all set their own rules. One hospital told us "under no circumstances" would they accept a stranger. The other center said the would consider a stranger "as long as you didn't meet through matchingdonors.com."