40 Years Later: Transplant Patient Beats Odds

40 Years Later: Transplant Patient Beats Odds
Frank Germinaro Celebrates 4 Decades Of Medical History

POSTED: 6:33 pm CST March 10, 2010
UPDATED: 7:04 pm CST March 10, 2010

KENOSHA, Wis. -- After a kidney transplant, Frank Germinaro was told that he wouldn't live long or have children. Four decades later, he's proving the doctors wrong.

Germinaro was 20 years old in March 1970 when doctors put him on dialysis. He had kidney disease since birth and needed a transplant. A 14-year-old girl who was dying of brain cancer became his donor.

Doctors said he could live on one good kidney but only for about five years; and he could never have kids.

Forty years later, Germinaro has had a full life as an educator and principal in Racine. It was a career that spanned 31 years.

He retired to St. Marks, where he is the current principal of the parish.

In addition to his students, he has four of his own children and one grandchild. He said having kids was the first thing he wanted to prove the doctors wrong about when he married his wife, Janet.

"Oh, she was a sharp-looker you know, and I was feeling my oats, because I had just had a transplant," Germinaro said.

"We met up at the Christmas party and I had heard about this poor Frankie, poor Frankie, and I thought what is wrong with this guy. And he was really sick, obviously, he was very sick," Janet Germinaro said. "But at the time you're in love you don't care about that, so OK, you get married. The big joke in our family is that I thought, 'Oh good, five years, no kids. Hey I could still go on from there, you know it wouldn't be a problem,' and it's almost 36 years we've been married and he's still here."

Germinaro said he believes there is a reason why he's still here, and it's not all about him. It's about others.

"I would hope so, living hope for other people that have diseases. And just two years ago they discovered I had prostate cancer also, so I've gone through radiation and Cchemo and, you just can't keep a good man down, just can't keep a good guy down. But here I am back doing this," Frank Germinaro said.

Germinaro said he plans to retire for the second time in June, but it wouldn't be hard to imagine the eighth-longest-living kidney transplant patient trying something new.

He said he never met the family of his kidney donor, though he would like to.

Thursday is also National Kidney Day, as well as the anniversary of his transplant.

http://www.wisn.com/health/22803233/detail.html