Remarkable heart defines 96-year-old kidney transplant pioneer

Denise Crosby: Remarkable heart defines 96-year-old kidney transplant pioneer

By Denise Crosby dcrosby@stmedianetwork.com March 17, 2012 7:58PM

Just a few months shy of hitting 97, Marian Reed-Ellis still has a beautiful smile and — as her doctor recently told her — the legs of a gal 50 years younger.

But neither attribute is what makes this petite, snow-haired Aurora woman so remarkable.

Fact is, it’s her kidney — or lack of one. And you can read all those facts in yellowed magazine and newspaper clips that tout Reed-Ellis as among the first kidney donors in the country — which means she’s possibly the oldest who is still living.

Over the years, Reed-Ellis has had to bury all three of her children who died from kidney failure. But it was her youngest son who lived the longest, by far, thanks to his mother’s gift back in 1964 — when kidney transplants were still in the pioneer stage and risks far greater than they are today.

Advancing age has not faded those bittersweet memories from the still-sharp mind of Reed-Ellis. She and her first husband, Raymond Reed, had two daughters on dialysis when their son Raymond, a small red-headed junior at West Aurora High School who was nicknamed Butch, also began getting ill. He was showing advanced symptoms of what was then known as Bright’s disease, a genetic kidney weakness on her husband’s side of the family.

It became quickly apparent Butch was not responding to dialysis, which at that time was only being done in Chicago. As the teen’s condition rapidly deteriorated, the specialist suggested an experimental surgery performed in only a couple places in the country.

The first kidney transplant involving living patients took place in 1954 at Brigham Hospital in Boston between identical twins. The recipient died eight years later. Back in 1964, only 244 had been performed in the U.S., and only 18 lived longer than 24 months.

Still, as one news article stated, “There is reason for cautious optimism about the future of human organ transplants.” At the time, the surgery was deemed “highly experimental.”

But with their son’s health quickly deteriorating, the Reeds felt they had no choice but to give it a try.

Those old news clippings also showed the Fox Valley community rallying behind the family, who needed $2,000 just to check in to the Denver hospital, as well as funds for the five-month stay. In addition, the Reeds took out a second mortgage. And Butch’s dad, who had already lost two sisters to kidney failure, “worked day and night” to save money.

By the time the family arrived in Denver in November of 1964, Butch’s condition was so critical that his parents were thankful he had even survived the trip. They rented an apartment and settled in for a battery of tests that, among other things, determined mother and son were a perfect match. Records note his surgeons were part of a famed transplant team that also had completed the only liver transplant on record at the time.

“Rare Kidney operation is Performed” read the headlines that followed.

There were complications. Butch, in the hospital two weeks, did fine, but Marian developed blood clots. In April 1965, the family was able to finally return home.

Butch thrived with his mom’s kidney, but oldest sister Judy Reed Glover, still on dialysis, died three years later at age 28. The middle child, Bette Reed Banks, also continued to rely on dialysis as she worked as a secretary at Aurora University. Testing by more family members failed to produce matches; and Bette refused to consider a transplant from non-family after watching others go through the procedures and die.

Marian’s husband died in 1998. And a year later, after losing her mobility and eyesight and barely able to even move, Bette, too, passed away.

“It was a horrible death,” says niece Nancy Forsell. “That took a lot out of Aunt Marian,” who felt guilty she had no spare kidney to give to her daughter.

The organ she donated to her son finally gave out in August 2006. Butch died at age 60, but not before earning a doctorate and carving out a remarkable career working with the deaf. In April, his mom will be in the audience when he is inducted into West Aurora High School’s Wall of Fame.

“Butch always told me, ‘Mom, you gave me the best years of my life.’ ”

Reed-Ellis recalls those words of her son with a smile which, along with those enviable legs and news-making kidney, makes her so special. But it is perhaps her heart that truly defines who she is.

“I’ve never known anyone who lost as much as Marian has,” says Forsell. “But she rarely gets down ... and she always, always, has that smile.”

http://beaconnews.suntimes.com/news/crosby/11262298-418/remarkable-heart-defines-96-year-old-kidney-transplant-pioneer.html