Neighbor's daughter gives kidney to ailing city man

Neighbor's daughter gives kidney to ailing city man

June 8, 2007

By Brent Curtis Herald Staff

After nearly two unsuccessful years of waiting on donor lists, Lester McKinstry found the lifesaving kidney he needed next door.

McKinstry, 73, a retired carpenter who lives with his wife, Gladys, on Sunset Drive in Rutland, has been in need of a kidney since his own began shutting down because of a degenerative condition that runs in his family.

"My older brother passed away from the same thing," he said Thursday.

He lived in pain for more than a year and dropped to 130 pounds from 160 as his kidneys continued to shut down. The active McKinstry, who was planting trees in his backyard this week, said he barely had the energy to leave his house just a few months ago.

"I could hardly do anything because it ached and hurt so bad," he said.

By Christmas 2006, McKinstry was preparing for dialysis.

Instead, he got an unexpected gift during a dinner party at the home of his neighbor, Marjorie Hodgson.

Hodgson's daughters, Dorothy (Dori) Lyon and Nancy Hodgson, offered to give him one of their kidneys. After weeks of medical preparation, it was decided that Lyon would be the sister to give up one of her kidneys during an organ transfer at Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington.

The procedure was completed April 4.

To say that McKinstry was surprised by the sisters' offer is an understatement.

While he and his wife have known Hodgson since they moved into their house seven years ago, they rarely see Lyon, 57, who lives with her husband in Virginia, or Nancy Hodgson, 50, who lives in Texas.

"We see them once or twice a year in the summer and at Christmas," McKinstry said. "I was very surprised by the offer. Surprised and grateful."

Reached by phone Thursday, Lyon, who grew up in Rutland, credited her mother's love of correspondence for putting the thought of donating a kidney into her mind.

"My mother is quite a good letter writer," she said. "On so many of her letters, she would write of some kindness that the McKinstrys had done."

But Lyon credited her sister with solidifying the idea by being the first to offer her kidney and then by following through with research into what kind of tests needed to be done to make the donation possible.

Preliminary tests found both sisters eligible to donate their organs. But Lyon said the support she would have at home from her husband, Al Proulx, proved to be the deciding factor that put her on the operating table.

Lyon said she recovered from the procedure fairly quickly and was back to work within two weeks.

McKinstry's recovery has taken longer and the success of the procedure won't be known for months as his body's immune system is held at bay by anti-rejection medications.

From the moment the surgeons inserted the new kidney, the prognosis has been positive.

"It started working the moment they put it in," Gladys McKinstry said. "Sometimes they don't start working for a day or more."

Two months after what the doctors told him was the equivalent of three major surgeries, McKinstry said he was feeling better and regaining his strength every day.

"So far, so good," he said knocking on a wooden table.

He did not report one possible side-effect that Lyon relayed on Thursday.

"I told him if he developed a craving for potato chips, that's my fault," she said.

Contact Brent Curtis at brent.curtis@rutlandherald.com.

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