In sickness and in health: Police captain to donate kidney to ailing wifeBy Michele McPhee
Boston Herald Police Bureau Chief
Monday, February 12, 2007 - Updated: 02:56 AM EST
It is a conversation that Boston Police Capt. Kelley McCormick and his wife Kim have practiced with each other before they will say it aloud to their 5-year-old son in the coming weeks.
“Mommy has a kidney that’s not working and Daddy has one that he can give her.”
Of course Ryan will not be able to grasp the gravity of those words, or realize the rare miracle that his father would be “a perfect match,” as doctors described it, to donate a kidney to his mom.
Ordinarily blood relatives are chosen, as was the case nine years ago when Kim received her first kidney transplant from her sister. Unfortunately, Kim McCormick, 43, fell into the 30th percentile of people whose transplants fail after 10 years. She was prepared to go to her family again to ask for help, but her husband insisted he undergo the testing first.
“I wanted to check just to make sure,” Kelley McCormick said, as Kim finished his sentence, “We never thought he would be a match.”
The match is surely an extension of the couple’s love story, which began in 1988 and has only burgeoned through obstacles over the years, challenges that included Ryan’s adoption from an orphanage in Bulgaria.
“It’s rare that I would be a match. But finally it’s a rare thing that has happened on the positive side for us,” said the police captain, who commands District 13 in Jamaica Plain.
Kim added: “Kelley’s the type to say, ‘Let’s just get this done. The way I see it, now he’ll really be a part of me.”
Right now there are 1,125 failing patients in Greater Boston waiting for a kidney, according to the National Kidney Foundation, and for many, that wait is a futile one. In 2005, 158 people on organ donation lists at Boston hospitals died waiting for transplants.
McCormick will also become the first city employee allowed to take 30 days’ paid sick leave to recover from the surgery under new legislation that was passed in September by the City Council and signed by Mayor Thomas M. Menino.
“I’m not surprised at all that Kelley is going to give his wife a kidney. He’s a very special guy,” Menino said. “I’m glad this bill was passed for him and others.”
The Massachusetts version of the bill was created by Sen. Jack Hart, who signed onto the campaign after a boyhood friend, Francis “Fran” Collins, donated his kidney to save his brother’s life in 2004. That brother, John Collins, is now healthy. City Councilor Michael Flaherty pushed a version of the bill through the City Council and Menino signed off on it. The support did not end there.
Last month, BPD Commissioner Ed Davis sent out a department-wide memo urging cops to donate blood for the McCormicks’ transplant surgery in a drive held at One Schroeder Plaza. Dozens showed up. Recalling the long blue line of people who were waiting with their sleeves rolled up prompted the veteran BPD captain to blink back tears.
“It was very emotional to see people do that,” he said.
Capt. McCormick plans to use his recovery time wisely. Determined to spread a message that technology has made organ donation less taxing on the body, McCormick will run Boston’s “Run to Remember” on Memorial Day weekend.
It is a marathon in memory of fallen officers, including Ernesto “Tito” Wittington, who worked for McCormick in the gang unit before he died of liver failure waiting for an organ.
He also plans to run the New York City marathon in November.
“I want to show people you can bounce back,” he said, then adding with a smile, “I told Kim, ‘if I give you a kidney, you can never say I’m never home.’ ”
Watching the McCormicks with their son, who wore a tiny BPD badge pinned to his T-shirt, it was clear that they both have the determination to bounce back.
Kelley McCormick said, “People always like to call cops heroes, well Kim’s the real hero.”
URL:
http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=182413
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