Family makes organ match at online site

Family makes organ match at online site

3-27-2007

By Deanna Raymond
newsletter@seacoastonline.com

Editor's note: Last names were withheld for privacy reasons.

BRENTWOOD -- Thanks to a match made online and possibly in heaven, Diane and Tom and their three school-age children have a life of hope.

It wasn't a dating service, though Diane will joke it felt like signing up for one, but an online organ donor match site called matchingdonors.com that brought renewed vitality and promise to the family. After two years on dialysis a donor was found to give Tom a new kidney.

Next month marks National Donate Life Month. National Donate Life Month assists in raising public awareness of the critical need for organ, tissue, marrow and blood donation, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing.

The Brentwood family had known Tom was ill for the past seven years and as dialysis became a reality, so did the task of finding a donor. According to Diane, the waiting list was daunting and four to five years long.

Last November, Diane took matters into her own hands and made a public appeal in local church bulletins and the Brentwood Newsletter for a donor. From there, she continued with online research and found matchingdonors.com.

The site is unique. It matches living donors to those in need of organs by setting up profiles and allowing users a tool to find a match.

"I did a lot of research to make sure it was nonprofit and legal," she said. "We joined online and I worked it really hard for months."

Like anything found online, Diane said it is best to be cautious and she screened many responses to find the right one.

Tom's match was a man from Illinois and after much e-mailing and testing on his end in Chicago, the donor was flown to Boston and Massachusetts General Hospital on Jan. 11. He underwent a barrage of tests to make 100 percent sure he was a perfect fit.

"There are very strong guidelines to be a donor," Diane said of the process. "What makes this special is that it was Mass. General's first time to have a success story with Matching Donors."

The success story of the online donation was aired on Fox 25 the evening of Tom's surgery on Jan. 16. Since then, 20 donors from around the Northeast signed onto the Web site. Donors were from the central and western part of the country.

"That's huge," Diane said.

Another huge step for transplant surgery since Diane began her search, is the $8 million grant from the American Society of Transplant Surgeons to help donors with the cost of testing and travel. Diane and Tom missed that and any grants from Mass. General were for transplants between family members only, but Diane said this initiative gives them hope for other people.

"We were lucky he was an altruistic donor," she said. "He wanted nothing at all but to help my family. I am hoping the grant will pave the way for other altruistic donors."

Weeks after his surgery, Tom said he is feeling different already. Diane said just not having to spend five hours, three days a week in dialysis has made her husband feel like a new person. Diane said Tom no longer suffers from chronic fatigue, which kept him from helping with dinner or playing ball with his children.

"Right now we are just at the very beginning stages (of recovery) but there is a lot of hope for the future," she said. "Finding a donor takes persistence. It wasn't easy but it was worth it."

The nonprofit MatchingDonors.com, based in Canton, Mass., has been featured on the Discovery Channel's show "Surgery Saved My Life," on C-Span and in magazines. Its first match came in 2004 and it now has a list of 3,500 potential donors for livers, kidneys, pancreas, lungs, bone marrow and intestines.

The service is free to donors; there is a fee to those looking for organs. Statistics show 17 people die every day awaiting transplants.

Thanks to matchingdonors.com and the generosity of a stranger, Tom and many others found or will be able to find an alternative route back to hope.

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