"The Ultimate Gift" - Daughter to donate kidney to her dad later this month

"The Ultimate Gift"
Daughter to donate kidney to her dad later this month

By DEAN OLSEN
STAFF WRITER

Published Sunday, June 17, 2007

Natalie Beck never expected it at first.

But her inability to give birth has become a blessing for her and her father, David Doom of Springfield. He will receive one of the Decatur woman's kidneys in a life-changing operation June 27 at Memorial Medical Center.

The fact that Beck didn't have young children at home made her father more open to the idea of his 39-year-old daughter undergoing major surgery that carries some risk.

"This made me feel like it was part of God's plan, that I was going to be able to provide life in a different way," said Beck, a graduate of Lanphier High School and the University of Illinois who previously worked in journalism and marketing. "It's the ultimate gift that I can give him."

Beck, who is married and has three stepchildren in their early 20s, normally gives her 62-year-old father car wax, special towels or auto-related cleaning supplies on Father's Day to stoke his lifelong passion for collecting and showing Mustangs.

Today, however, Beck doesn't plan to give him anything.

Her left kidney - which Dr. Timothy O'Connor will remove and Dr. Edward Alfrey will implant in Doom's body in separate three-hour operations - should suffice this year, Beck said.

"It's kind of a lifelong accumulation of Father's Day gifts I can give him," she said. "It will help get his quality of life back."

Doom grew up on a Logan County farm between Elkhart and Mount Pulaski, graduated from Bradley University with an accounting degree and worked as an IBM marketing representative for 34 years before retiring in 2001.

He said he never smoked or drank and wasn't obese. But he wasn't aware he had any major health problems until 1995, when he was diagnosed with diabetes and high blood pressure.

Looking back, he said he regretted that he didn't get regular checkups in his 30s and 40s. Those examinations probably would have detected the high pressure that could have contributed to his subsequent kidney problems.

About one in four U.S. adults has high blood pressure, but more than one-third of those with the condition don't even know they have it, and less than half are on medicine to reduce the negative effects, according to federal officials.

Kidney cancer led to the removal of Doom's left kidney in 1999, and function of his right kidney declined to the point that he had to start receiving renal dialysis three times a week at a DaVita center in Springfield beginning in September 2005.

He joined the more than 470,000 Americans who undergo the blood-cleansing procedure. Dialysis prolongs life but costs the federal Medicare program $16 billion a year as part of a growing medical crisis largely related to rising rates of diabetes and obesity.

Doom, whose own medical care is covered by his former employer, got on the waiting list for a kidney transplant but knew he probably would wait three to five years before an organ from a deceased donor would become available.

That wait was tolerable at first. Daughter Natalie was in her mid-30s, and daughter Kristina Martin of Bloomington was a few years younger and raising two sons younger than 10.

Then medical complications made the already draining and time-consuming dialysis process more difficult. Doctors weren't able to access blood vessels in one of his arms, and a shunt in the other arm often became clogged, requiring him to be hospitalized while the line was cleared.

That line recently became inoperable, requiring doctors and nurses in the dialysis center to start using a catheter attached to vessels in his neck.

The unpredictable hospitalizations and rigid schedule required of dialysis patients prevented Doom and his wife of 42 years, Linda, to abandon their beloved tradition of vacationing in the mountains of Colorado. And their social schedule changed drastically.

"My calendar is always written in pencil because our plans change so much," said Linda, a retired state government human-resources manager who will turn 60 the day of the transplant. She believes all the stress contributed to some chest pain and heart problems of her own.

The dialysis complications prompted Beck to begin the screening tests for donors in February. Her father didn't try to stop her.

"I'm very grateful to her. She never did get my OK - she just did it," Doom said, smiling at Beck during an interview in his home on Springfield's north side.

"Dialysis is very hard," he said. "It really wears on you."

When Beck, a homemaker, found out her kidneys were compatible for transplant, her husband, Matt, 51, who owns a chain of cell-phone retail stores, encouraged her to go forward.

"My husband is Mr. Optimist," she said.

The transplant isn't without risks to both donor and recipient, according to Alfrey, a Southern Illinois University School of Medicine surgeon who runs the program at Memorial with O'Connor, another SIU doctor.

Kidney-transplant patients in the United States receive organs from living donors 35 percent to 40 percent of the time. In Springfield, 32 percent of the approximately 40 kidney transplants each year at Memorial use living donors, and only one other transplant in the past six years involved a daughter donating a kidney to her father.

Out of the 6,500 people who donate a kidney each year, an average of one person - less than one-tenth of 1 percent - dies from complications of the surgery each year, Alfrey said.

Less than 1 percent of living donors have short-term bleeding problems afterward.

And 5 percent of the time, organ rejection and other complications cause kidneys from living donors to fail after a year. Still, that rate is lower than the failure rate of organs from deceased donors, Alfrey said.

He said transplant recipients who receive kidneys from living donors usually get better long-term results than patients with kidneys from deceased donors. Patients with kidneys from living donors gain an average of 15 years of life compared with kidney patients on long-term dialysis.

Studies show that the cost of the transplant - $50,000 for the recipient and $20,000 for the donor - saves money for Medicare and private insurance in the long run compared with the $67,000 to $180,000 annual cost per patient for dialysis.

Medicare and private insurance connected with the recipient pay the transplant-related costs that donors incur.

Doom and his wife are looking forward to when he no longer must spend every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at the DaVita dialysis center, although they said they appreciated the care he has received at the center and in the hospital.

Beck said some friends have questioned why she would put herself at risk by donating a kidney.

"It's a gift I can give back to both my parents," she said. "They gave me a great life growing up and a college education. I thought it was a very natural thing to do."

Dean Olsen can be reached at 788-1543 or dean.olsen@sj-r.com.

http://www.sj-r.com/sections/news/stories/116868.asp#