Previously anonymous, kidney donor and recipient meet each other for first time

[okarol]

Previously anonymous, kidney donor and recipient meet each other for first time

Updated: Wednesday, June 23, 2010, 10:59 AM

Perfect strangers no more, they had found each other out, exchanged e-mails and become Facebook friends.

And Monday afternoon, six weeks after her anonymously donated left kidney was transplanted into his abdomen, Brenda Hanson and Jon Seaman met in person. By prior arrangement, and accompanied by their spouses, they showed up in the doorway of Chevys Fresh Mex restaurant in Hillsboro. They made tentative eye contact, nodded and hugged.

"How are you?" said Hanson, the 44-year-old donor from Vancouver.

[Archive - Read our earlier story on what motivated Brenda Hanson to give up a kidney, not knowing who would receive it. http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2010/06/woman_gives_a_kidney_not_knowi.html]

"Good," replied Seaman, the 43-year-old recipient from Beaverton. "I didn't realize how nervous I was."

"Me, too," Hanson said.

What started out a little like a blind date eased into a summer solstice thanksgiving lunch, with a side of chips and salsa. The foursome seemed to hit it off like new old friends, over a meal that lasted more than two hours and never hit a conversational lull.

They compared notes on their recoveries from the May 10 transplant at Legacy Good Samaritan Medical Center and the reactions of family and friends. They traded stories of how they had met as couples, what they do for a living and how they feel about rock bands such as Rush (here the unanimity broke down). And they exchanged, over and over, expressions of gratitude.

"I feel like you guys have given us a gift," Troy Hanson said to Seaman and his wife, Tracey. "I know that sounds weird."

Initially skeptical of his wife's wish to donate a kidney to an unknown recipient, he has come full circle and applied to become an anonymous donor himself.

For his part, Seaman spoke of how uplifting it was to know that his life-prolonging kidney came from someone still alive, not a trauma victim. Last week, he and his wife forwarded to the Hansons a decorated carton full of thank-you letters from their family and friends.

"We sat on the bed for two hours and read them, and cried," Brenda Hanson said.

Seaman, who works at Intel and writes poetry, has blogged openly about his transplant and his gratitude to the donor he knew only as a "woman about my age." He posted an ultrasound scan of his new kidney.

A friend of Hanson's was the first to connect the dots. The friend's sister, having read Seaman's blog because of their common interest in poetry, happened to tell her about this man who had received a kidney from someone he didn't know. That's funny, the friend replied -- because she knew someone who just gave a kidney to someone she didn't know.

Bingo!

"I was really nervous and hesitant to contact him," Hanson says. But her husband wasn't. He e-mailed Seaman, saying he believed his wife was the donor.

Seaman e-mailed back, with a mix of gratitude and cautious respect. More e-mails followed. And they agreed to meet after exchanging notes through the Legacy transplant team.

Hanson joined the Pacific Northwest Transplant Bank's anonymous living donor program last year, offering to give up one of her kidneys without knowing who would get it. Most transplanted kidneys come either from cadavers or people who donate to a family member or close friend.

The program, which covers OHSU Hospital and Legacy Good Sam, has arranged eight anonymous-donor transplants in Oregon. Hanson and Seaman are the first patients to disclose their identity and meet in person.

"This process worked really well," says Laurie Pharr, donor transplant coordinator at Legacy, who screened Seaman's package of thank-you letters before turning it over to Hanson last week. "These two very intelligent people are choosing to meet on their own. And we're OK with that."

For more info: Call the Pacific Northwest Transplant Bank at 503-494-7856. Web site: www.pntb.org

-- Don Colburn

http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2010/06/previously_anonymous_kidney_do.html