Sunday, March 18, 2007 12:06 AM CDT
Woman gets kidney from adopted daughter By DICK JOHNSON, Of The Globe Gazette
MASON CITY — Marilyn Johnson was in tough shape a year ago.
Her kidneys were failing.
Doctors said she could do nothing and await death, undergo dialysis and live another few years, or risk a transplant.
The wait to receive a kidney from a deceased donor may have been too long for the 73-year-old from Ring-sted.
Why not try a live donor? asked Johnson’s daughter, Gale Loveless of Mason City.
And why can’t it be me?
On Feb. 21, Mayo Clinic doctors implanted one of Gale’s kidneys into the woman who adopted her at two weeks of age.
Both women are thriving.
“She’s a full-blooded Dane, so she’s full of spunk,” said Loveless, 46, a substitute teacher in the Mason City School District. “My mom’s a wonderful woman and she’s been through so much, and she’s kind of a fighter in her own way. The doctors are amazed that she’s doing so well, because of her age. They’re so happy that things are going so well for us.”
Her doctor said Johnson received “a beautiful kidney” from her daughter, whom she and her late husband, Loren, adopted through the Florence Crittenton Home (now the Crittenton Center), a family services organization in Sioux City.
“That was the most wonderful thing in the world,” Loveless said. “She saved my life. There’s no way in the world I could ever repay her for that. I just love her to death, I guess. I just want her to be OK.”
Loveless returned home two days after the surgery.
It was, she said, as if everything was meant to be. Her O positive blood type is compatible with all others. Her heart tested fine.
“When I first found out that everything went through OK, the tests and everything, I was near tears,” she said. “I was so happy that I could do something for Mom.”
A social worker asked Loveless if she had second thoughts.
“I said, ‘Nope.’ I wasn’t scared or anything,” she said. “I just believe it was the strength of faith. And people have been so wonderful. I’m just so grateful that it could be done and that Mom’s doing so well.”
Johnson, now 74, also is home after recuperating at the Gift of Life Transplant House near the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
She looks forward to the family’s annual summer vacation at Spirit Lake.
“I just want to get well,” she said, “because I do have a lot of work in the summertime (on her farm near Ringsted). I just have to take it one day at a time until things are OK.”
Reach Dick Johnson at 421-0556 or dick.johnson@globegazette.com.
http://www.globegazette.com/articles/2007/03/18/local/doc45fcaa56479e2945128086.txt
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