KIDNEY MEANS ‘LIFE’: ‘I didn’t give it a second thought’

KIDNEY MEANS ‘LIFE’: ‘I didn’t give it a second thought’

Posted: Monday, April 16, 2012 4:03 pm | Updated: 4:10 pm, Mon Apr 16, 2012.
By BUZZY HASSRICK | 0 comments

(EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first of a three-part series about life-saving kidney transplants, told from the perspectives of both donors and recipients. This is “National Donate Life Month.”)

The topic of a kidney donation began as a light-hearted exchange between brothers Jeff and Greg Taggart.
“Initially it appeared as a kind of joke,” Greg recalls. “We kind of have a dark sense of humor.”
Then the joking turned somber as Jeff became ill.
“I was unaware of how sick he actually was,” Greg says. “When the joking became serious, it got me thinking and my wife thinking.”
He learned that Jeff, who’d been living with diabetes, had developed kidney disease. Jeff’s four siblings – Greg, Chris, Colette and Megan – talked among themselves about becoming a donor and got tested.
The results showed that two of them, Greg and Megan, the oldest and youngest, were the best candidates. While Megan was the better match, Greg had the larger kidney, so he was chosen, he says.
“I didn’t give it a second thought,” Taggart says. “It seemed to be the thing to do.
“He needed a kidney, and I had a kidney.”
Although his wife Janet initially had some reservations and questions, she was always supportive of his donating a kidney to Jeff, he adds. Psychological testing and more screening followed, along with meetings with his personal physician, an independent nephrologist and the transplant team.

The Cody-Utah connection

The three Taggart brothers had worked as partners at Taggart Co. in Cody. Greg’s association lasted 1983-91, until he moved to the Provo/Orem area in Utah. He’s an adjunct professor at Brigham Young University, teaching writing in the honors program as well as an honors, undergraduate class called “American Heritage.” He also does freelance writing, mostly on financial topics.
That career suits him, Greg says, because he’s more effective selling prose than insurance.
The geographic distance between the two brothers was not a factor for the transplant, as Jeff traveled to Salt Lake City for the operation about five years ago. Greg recalls being told that Jeff would go in feeling worse and come out feeling better, while he’d go in feeling fine and come out feeling worse. That proved true.
Still, he adds, there was only one minor complication, a protruding navel caused by a stitch that didn’t hold. In several weeks he’d recovered about 80 percent and reached 100 percent in about a month. He functions fine with one kidney.
“I haven’t missed it,” Greg says. “It hasn’t affected my life at all. I do everything I did before.”
He checks his creatinine levels, watches his weight and health, and has started running again. He has no regrets about sharing an organ with his brother.
“We were pretty close to begin with, and it made us closer,” Greg says.
Jeff was so appreciative and his family was too, he says. The brothers would call every year on the anniversary of the surgery to wish each other a happy day.
Jeff died, likely of a heart attack, five years after the transplant at age 56 on Feb. 6, 2012, the anniversary month of the surgery.
When Greg spoke at the service, he said an idea struck him.
“A part of me died with him,” he recalls. “It caused me pause when I said that.”

http://www.codyenterprise.com/news/local/article_fde008da-880f-11e1-a42f-0019bb2963f4.html