Pastor donates kidney to parishioner

[okarol]

August 30, 2009

Pastor donates kidney to parishioner

By HERB BROCK
The Advocate-Messenger

DANVILLE, Ky. — Roxie Bennett has been a member of Centenary United Methodist Church for about a decade. She believes she's developed a close relationship with the church's pastor, the Rev. Quentin Scholtz.

Their relationship recently grew even closer as the two have yet another thing in common — Scholtz's kidney.

In a double surgery Aug. 25, at the University of Cincinnati Hospital, the left kidney of the 60-year-old pastor was removed and placed into the body of his 48-year-old parishioner.

Bennett suffers from polycystic kidney disease, a genetic disorder that has been dominant on her mother's side of the family. Her mother died of kidney failure when Bennett was 11.

Her mother's younger sister also suffers from polycystic kidney disease and has been on dialysis for 28 years. The disease was passed down to Bennett and her two brothers.

"Both of my brothers had polycystic kidney disease, and one died at age 42 and the other at age 48," she said.

Both of her kidneys were removed June 17 of last year. Since then, Bennett has had to undergo hemodialysis, which essentially cleans the blood and returns it to the patient's body, three days a week.

"Being strapped down for four hours, not counting the setup and takedown of equipment, and going through what can be painful and even bloody at times, is not a pleasant experience," she said.

In addition to the treatments, Bennett has had to live on a strict diet that hasn't allowed her to eat cheeses, tomatoes, melons and bananas and also has restricted her intake of liquids to 32 ounces a day.

Bennett said she has been able to get through the dialysis ordeal with a lot of support from her doctors, the nurses at the DIC clinic in Danville, and her family.

The Rev. Scholtz and his wife, Becky, not only have prayed for and with Bennett but also have given her DVDs to help pass the time during her dialysis treatments.

Even before her kidneys became so diseased they had to be removed, Bennett determined that her best chance for life would be a kidney transplant.

With Dr. Jim Duncan's help, she had her name placed on a kidney transplant recipient list in December 2006, and she chose the University of Cincinnati Hospital, one of the nation's top kidney transplant facilities, as the place for the surgery, whenever it would occur.

Bennett then began the wait for a kidney from a living donor or a cadaver. Her chances at a match were not enhanced because she has B-positive blood, a fairly rare type.

Scholtz says his decision to donate a kidney to his parishioner was an answer to a question he says God posed to him in divinity school. Scholtz, who has B-positive blood, answered that question when he decided to offer Bennett one of his kidneys.

Meanwhile, the prayers of an entire congregation back in Danville will be with its pastor and fellow parishioner. Six hundred of them are sporting green organ donation wristbands that Scholtz had ordered from the National Kidney Foundation. Scholtz and Bennett and their spouses were wearing the wristbands Tuesday.

"Only God knows what will come of this," said Bennett. "God moved both Quentin and me toward this point in each of our lives, so it's all up to God now."

http://www.theleafchronicle.com/article/20090830/NEWS01/908300330