Woman donates kidney to father of three

I want my kidney back: Donor, recipient no longer speak

Monday, December 1, 2008 11:24 AM EST

By Abbe Smith, Register Staff

Steve Zmuda, his wife, Brenda, and their three children have something special to be thankful for this holiday season.

The 30-year-old father is in good health after undergoing a kidney transplant in October courtesy of a Good Samaritan who stepped forward to save the life of a man she had never met.

That woman — a 26-year-old single mother living in New Haven named Mary Gotay — also is in good health following the surgery, but she is not in good spirits.

What began as a heart-warming story of the triumph of human kindness has transformed into the sad tale of a friendship soured by squabbles over money. Despite the special bond between Gotay and Zmuda — a shared kidney — the two no longer speak. Gotay claims Zmuda has become greedy about money people donated to her to help her get by while recuperating from the surgery. She says he and his family have shut her out and do not ever inquire about how she is doing. When she had a slight complication after the surgery, Zmuda did not visit her in the hospital, she says.

And now Gotay has had a change of heart about donating her kidney.

“I regret giving my kidney to a person so ungrateful for what someone has done for him,” she says between sobs.

So too, the Zmudas have regrets.

“I’m grateful for what she did. I’m glad that she saved my husband’s life,” Brenda says. “But she’s getting greedy.”

It all started a little more than a year ago when Steve, who has diabetes, went to the hospital with chest pains and doctors diagnosed him with congestive heart failure. After initially thinking the heart problem was affecting Steve’s kidneys, doctors soon realized his failing kidneys were to blame for the heart problem. He eventually was diagnosed with end-state renal, or kidney, failure. Kidneys are crucial organs that help the body excrete waste.

Steve underwent nightly dialysis to survive for a year and had several close calls. Through it all, he continued to work part-time at Sonitrol security systems of Bridgeport.

Gotay entered the Zmuda family’s life last May when she overheard Brenda having an emotional conversation with a friend about Steve’s worsening condition. The two mothers were picking up their children at Washington School in West Haven.

Gotay introduced herself to Brenda and offered to help. Five months later, on Oct. 9, Steve and Gotay were in separate operating rooms at Yale-New Haven Hospital with surgeons removing her kidney and transplanting it into Steve.

The surgery was a success.

When Brenda first saw her husband in the hospital, she immediately saw an improvement.

“He looked good,” she says, a smile widening across her face. “He actually had color on him. It’s like he got a tan in the OR.”

The couple’s three kids — Starianna, 9, Brianna, 6 and Stephen Jr., 4 — visited their dad in the hospital the next day.

Life has changed for the Zmuda family. After a year of Brenda helping Steve do his nightly dialysis, the removal of his dialysis tube earlier this month was a burden lifted. Now the family looks forward to a year of joys they couldn’t experience last year because of his illness. Years ago, the family went camping every weekend in the summer and visited Six Flags amusement park.

“Last summer, we couldn’t do any of that,” Brenda says.

Next summer, they can.

But things right now aren’t as rosy as they could be.

Brenda says she and Steve started bickering with Gotay about money even before the surgery happened. Originally scheduled for Sept. 25, the big day was postponed until Oct. 9. Before that day, Brenda says she had enough of the bickering and said to Gotay, “If you want to back out, back out now.” But Gotay didn’t.

Having just moved into a new house in Milford, the Zmudas are paying $1,400 a month in rent, higher than their last place. The couple sat around their kitchen table on a recent afternoon wondering how — or if — they can afford to give their kids a Christmas this year.

“It’s either put a roof over my kids’ heads or they have Christmas. I’m gonna put a roof over my kids’ heads,” Brenda says.

Steve is back to work part-time at Sonitrol and Brenda, who has a disability, does not work.

The Zmudas are frustrated with how things are unfolding with the National Transplant Assistance Fund, a nonprofit organization the family is working with to help raise funds to help the Zmudas and Gotay afford living expenses following the transplant.

Steve alleges that NTAF is holding up the payment of funds to his family because Gotay did not properly report two donations worth about $1,700 she received from a private donor and a church. Because of the holdup, the Zmudas say they might not be able to pay rent.

But Lynne Coughlin Samson, an attorney and executive director of NTAF, says the reason Steve has not received any funds from the NTAF is because he did not complete the application process, which includes showing financial need. Furthermore, Samson says, Steve never gave consent for Gotay to receive any of the money raised by his fundraising campaign.

“To date, he has not signed the authorization for Gotay to receive assistance,” Samson says.

Gotay has received a check from the NTAF to pay for one month of her rent. Samson says the money did not come from Steve’s fundraising campaign, but from the organization’s emergency fund.

Gotay says the private donations helped her pay overdue bills and rent that she could not afford because she took time off from work to recuperate from the surgery to remove her kidney. Gotay says she went back to work before doctors recommended because she wasn’t getting enough help from NTAF or from the Zmudas, whom she says had offered to help her during the difficult time.

NTAF helps patients organize, launch and run fundraising campaigns and helps collect and disperse the funds raised.

The Zmudas have held four fundraisers so far and say almost all the money collected was in the form of checks written out to the NTAF. They say they have turned over all the checks except the most recent ones because they are concerned about NTAF’s policy of dispersing funds.

But Gotay and her family paint a different picture of what happened.

She claims the Zmudas are “all about the money” and have tried to shut her out of the picture. Gotay further alleges that the Zmudas pocketed cash raised at the fundraisers and kept for themselves gifts donated by local businesses for raffles. She says her family alone gave mostly cash at a fundraiser at Painter Park and she has seen none of the money.

“They put me through so much stress. My transplant doctor is very worried about me. This wasn’t supposed to be about the money,” she says.

Gotay is back to work helping disabled and elderly people at a home and is working to make ends meet while raising her 11-year-old son, Israel Gonzalez.

Gotay says she is grateful NTAF finally provided her landlord with an emergency check for $750 — one month’s rent. But she says she is bogged down by bills and depressed about how the Zmudas are treating her after she donated her kidney to save Steve.

“I gave a father back. I gave a husband back. And I gave a man his life back,” she says. “It just hurts.”

Her mother, Noelia Gotay, who was on board at one time with her daughter’s decision to donate her kidney, now says that Steve does not deserve her daughter’s kidney.

“My daughter could have given that kidney to a little girl or boy who needs it,” she says.

Both Gotay and the Zmudas are looking to NTAF for help resolving the differences between them. Both say they are tired of the squabbles and just want to move on with their lives.

For Steve, that means weekly trips to the hospital to make sure his body is healthy and properly accepting Gotay’s kidney.

For Gotay, that means living with the knowledge that one of her kidneys is inside of an individual man she no longer considers a friend.

Abbe Smith can be reached at asmith@nhregister.com, or 789-5615.