Active dad owes his lifestyle to a successful kidney transplant

[okarol]

Publish Date: 6/22/2010

Active dad owes his lifestyle to a successful kidney transplant

By Magdalena Wegrzyn
© 2010 Longmont Times-Call

THORNTON — Dean Martin doesn’t want to be “the sick guy.”

And he’s not.

The 43-year-old divorced dad fly-fishes, hunts pheasants and quails, dabbles in woodwork and dotes on his college-bound daughter.

But a decade ago, it was a different story.

Earlier this month, he celebrated a milestone: the 10-year anniversary of his kidney transplant.

Martin, a 1985 Niwot High School graduate who lives in Thornton, received the kidney from his sister-in-law, Connie Martin.

“At first, I told her no,” he said. “I didn’t want to put her at risk. But she absolutely insisted, and I am very grateful.”

When Martin was a toddler, an aggressive case of strep throat spread to his kidneys and left scarring.

“It created some concern, but it should have been nothing to deal with throughout my life,” he said.

He married at 25 and “just didn’t take care of myself well.” As the marriage started to crack, his blood pressure skyrocketed, hovering at about 190 over 100.

At 27, he applied for life insurance, and doctors detected renal disease.

High blood pressure and diabetes are responsible for up to two-thirds of chronic kidney disease cases, according to the National Kidney Foundation.

Doctors prescribed high blood pressure medications and tried to control Martin’s hypertension with fish oil, but his kidneys slowly started to shut down.

In 1999, he hit end-stage renal failure, and physicians wanted to put him on dialysis.

He refused. After treatments, people “always looked sicker than they did coming in,” he said.

“I decided that if I came to a point where I hit the wall and I had to do it, I would,” he said. “But I wasn’t going to disturb my life, my daughter’s life, my work life by having to do that three times a week.”

As Martin’s kidney stopped filtering waste and fluid from his bloodstream, his legs began to swell, and he constantly had to elevate them. He worked fewer hours as a purchasing agent for a wholesale lumber company and often fell asleep on the couch in the evening right after making dinner.

Eventually, doctors entered him in the transplant lists, and the waiting began.

The United Network for Organ Sharing reports that 16,831 kidney transplants were performed last year.

Of those, 10,442 of the kidneys came from cadavers, and 6,389 were from live donors, such as family members or friends.

But there are 91,021 people on the national waiting list for a kidney, according to data the organization published earlier this month.

The National Kidney Foundation reports that 4,573 people died in 2008 while waiting for a kidney transplant.

Because of those odds, everyone in Martin’s family was tested to see if they could donate a kidney, and his sister-in-law was a match.

For Connie Martin, 43, it was a no-brainer: He was sick and she was healthy.

“It was really one of those things where he was sick, and it was like, ‘Why not?’” she said. “I kept passing all the tests along the way, and they kept telling me you can live with only one.”

Connie and Dean met when they attended the same Englewood middle school. In seventh grade, she began to date his older brother, Duane, and she married into the family 21 years ago.

She said she’s always been close with Dean.

“It’s almost like somebody you’ve known your whole life,” she said.

Surgeons removed Connie’s left kidney and implanted it in Dean on June 2, 2000, at Porter Adventist Hospital in Denver.

Immediately after surgery, Dean felt better. After six weeks at home, he was back at work.

Connie’s experience was the opposite.

“(Dean) had been feeling so bad for so long, he felt better almost instantly,” she said. “For me, I had gone from really, really healthy to feeling like you’ve been hit with a Mack truck.”

She spent the rest of the summer recovering before returning to her job as a business teacher at Littleton High School in August.

Ten years later, Martin takes daily medications he’ll need for the rest of his life to care for the kidney.

In addition to exercise, he keeps his sodium intake low and maintains a normal blood pressure.

He also obsessively tracks his water consumption (140 ounces in the winter and 160 ounces in summer).

“I have motivation to stay healthy for my sister-in-law,” he said. “I can’t waste what she gave me.”

Connie shrugs off accolades for the gift.

“At any time, any one of us could get very sick, and I’d hope that someone would step up and do the same for me,” she said.

Magdalena Wegrzyn can be reached at 303-684-5274 or mwegrzyn@times-call.com.

http://www.timescall.com/Health-Story.asp?id=22476