Response overwhelms Marine needing kidney

Response overwhelms Marine needing kidney
By Brian Shane - Staff writer
Posted : Saturday Mar 12, 2011 8:59:17 EST

Sgt. Jake Chadwick’s headaches were getting worse. They were lasting a week at a time, and aspirin wasn’t helping anymore. His first indication that something was really wrong came in October, after having his blood pressure checked. Compared to an average 23-year-old Marine, his blood pressure was through the roof.

Results of blood work showed that Chadwick’s kidneys weren’t filtering properly, and doctors returned with a bleak diagnosis: His kidneys were rapidly failing. The damage was beyond repair. He would need a transplant, and soon.

His wife Victoria — who had just given birth to a daughter Oct. 21 — shared the story with her friend Carolyn Blashek, founder of Operation Gratitude, a group that sends care packages to troops overseas.

Victoria asked for help spreading the word about her husband’s condition. Blashek sent out an e-mail Feb. 22 to about 12,000 people on her mailing list. It went viral on blogs and Facebook, and attracted the attention of local TV stations and newspapers.

Since then, the Chadwicks have been on the receiving end of more than 1,000 e-mails from strangers willing to donate a kidney, others who want to give money, and well-wishers offering their thoughts and prayers for the young couple.

“It’s amazing, the response we’ve gotten, because I don’t have anything to offer these people,” said Chadwick, an administrative clerk with 4th Tank Battalion, stationed at the San Diego Military Entrance Processing Station.

“And they’re not asking anything in return. Not recognition. They’re just looking to help a Marine.”

Chadwick endures four-hour kidney dialysis sessions three times a week at San Diego Naval Medical Center. Doctors say he may wait five years or more on a donor list. Chadwick has O-positive blood.

Kidneys regulate a body’s waste products and its salt-water balance. While “our kidneys do it 24/7 without us even knowing,” a person on dialysis only gets this done for a few hours a week, said Dr. Matthew Cooper, director of kidney transplant at the University of Maryland Medical Center.

Besides being at greater risk of heart disease, heart attack, vascular disease and strokes, dialysis patients have a survival rate in the single digits after 10 years.

Transplant patients, meanwhile, have a 10-year average survival rate of between 70 percent and 75 percent. Each year, about 90,000 people wait for a new kidney, while about 14,000 transplants are done.

Under Tricare, the couple has no major medical bills, so they decided to sock away donations for a fund that will pay for the transportation of Chadwick’s someday kidney donor.

More than anything, Chadwick said he wants everyone to know how grateful he and his family are for the flood of support.

“I look back, and I think about it. What if I wasn’t a Marine?” he said. “Would I still get the same support? I can’t say, but there’s a lot of people out there who do support the military, and it’s showing. It kind of restores my hope.”

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2011/03/marine-jake-chadwick-kidney-transplant-support-031211w/