Organ recipient meets donor’s family on ‘Montel Williams Show’

Organ recipient meets donor’s family on ‘Montel Williams Show’

By Patsy Cincotta - Staff writer

— Tom Starr of Centerville has had the experience of a lifetime, but it cost him three years on dialysis to get there. The recipient of a kidney from a 16-year-old boy in California, he is one of several helped by the boy’s donations. Just back from an all-expenses-paid trip to New York City to be on The Montel Williams Show, Starr got to meet with his donor’s family, Jose and Zona Zaragoza, their daughters Katrina and Christy and son Mark.
“It was so special, there just aren’t words to describe it,” Starr said. “We all felt like we were one family, his parents, two sisters and brother and my wife and I. There was also another recipient there, Lorma Sealy, who received his heart and lungs. She had been on oxygen all her life.”
Harvested from the boy in California were his heart, lungs, kidneys, pancreas and liver. Starr said Sealy and he were both perfect matches for the organs.
“His mom Zona has been in touch with every one of the organ recipients. The boy played football and his twin sister, Katrina, was a cheerleader. They’re a wonderful family. His parents and Katrina work with the California Donor Network and speak at different schools out there,” Starr said.
Starr has been working at Curwood (Union Carbide, Viskase) for 41 years. Diagnosed with diabetes in 1975, Starr said he first noticed something was wrong when he got very tired from routine jobs like mowing.
“I would be so tired I’d have to recuperate from routine chores I had always done. Something that used to take me 15 minutes was taking me an hour. Then one morning I started vomiting and I vomited eight times. When my wife called the doctor, he said to get me to the emergency room right away.
“She was driving me and at Franklin and Haynes, I passed out and quit breathing. She kept driving to the emergency room and they said I had to get to Des Moines, so put me in an ambulance,” he recalled.
“I quit breathing again on the way to Des Moines, so they met a helicopter in Knoxville and I was flown to Iowa Methodist.”
Symptoms of kidney failure include fatigue, loss of appetite, vomiting and protein in the urine. The body holds fluid, the blood pressure rises and harmful wastes build up in the body.
Starr found out his kidneys had failed completely and when they arrived at Iowa Methodist, they rushed him to an operating room and put a catheter in his groin to start dialysis. He was there four days and had two dialysis treatments before going home. Before he left, they put another catheter in his chest in case the other failed.
He started dialysis in Ottumwa and had to go three days a week for four hours a day.
“I could tell the difference after dialysis. It would take away the fluid retention. When I left the hospital, I could hardly get my pant legs over my calves I was holding so much fluid,” he said.
The women at the dialysis unit kept encouraging Starr to get on the list for a kidney transplant. They told him he was too young to live on dialysis and with a new kidney he would be back doing all the things he used to. On dialysis he was limited to 1500 cc of fluid a day, less than a quart. When thirsty, he sucked on ice cubes and frozen grapes. They got a shaved ice machine, but he said none of this was as good as being able to drink something.
“I also had to watch salt, potassium and phosphorus. I couldn’t eat cheese, milk, ice cream, tomatoes, potatoes; no ham, bacon or sausage because of the salt. I could have all the protein I wanted, I guess because the dialysis removed it. They used two 15-gauge needles during dialysis and that part was painful, one for removing the blood and one for putting it back in.”
One night he and his wife, Zelda, talked about a transplant and he said he was ready to get on the list. It took a little over two years to find a donor and he was on dialysis for three years.
“We got a call in September 2005, the day after Pancake Day, at 4 a.m. They said they had a kidney for me in California and they would call when it was removed. I felt very sorry about the boy who died, and guilty, too. I felt like at 57 years old, I should have been saving someone young instead of the other way around. We waited for the call, went to church, watched TV, ate dinner and it was bedtime. My wife said they would probably call in the middle of the night, and they called at 11 p.m. They said the kidney would be in Des Moines at 1 a.m. and we needed to be there by 7. We left home about 4:30 a.m.,” he said.
The first thing he had to do when they arrived at the hospital was have dialysis for two hours. Surgery was scheduled for 1:30 p.m. and he said there was a lot of paperwork involved. Then he went to surgery which lasted three-and-a-half hours.
“I went back to work in December and I started retaining fluid again. In January, the surgeons went back in and rerouted the ureter. Since then, I’ve had no problems. I can eat and drink what I want, except for having to watch the diabetes. I was taking a pill for it before but now I am on insulin. I have to take an anti-rejection drug, but I haven’t missed a day of work for sickness.”
A year after the death of his donor, Starr and his wife sent a thank you letter to his parents. Then they received an email from the California Donor Network wanting to know if they’d be interested in appearing on the Montel Williams television show. They had chosen the donor’s family and asked Starr and Sealy to appear, too. So they were off to New York City.
“I did a short interview with Montel’s staff on Wednesday when we arrived, but then we had Thursday to ourselves. We took a tour bus around the city and I wondered how those people could stand living there! As many people as live in Centerville were out walking on one block. It seemed like there was a Starbucks on every corner and one block had two McDonalds on it. We didn’t wander out much on our own. I was afraid if we got a block away from the hotel, we’d never find our way back,” he said.
Starr said when they met the donor’s family, they immediately felt a kinship.
“They were tickled to meet us, too. We felt so much like a family because of their son. After the show we sat around talking and Montel said he’d like to tape that, too, and show it at the end of the program. So we missed our flight home and they put us up for another night. I told my wife I wished they had put us in the same hotel with Jose and Zona so we could be with them longer. When we went down to eat supper, lo and behold, there they were in the same hotel. Lorma was there, too - we felt like we had known her all our life. So we all got to eat together and it was great.
“This was all like a dream come true. I know a lot of people don’t want to know about the donor, but what better way to keep your loved one’s memory going than this? Unfortunately, there aren’t enough donors and there are between 80,000 and 100,000 on the waiting list for transplants,” Starr said.
He considers himself one of the lucky ones because he got his life back.
Starr should know soon when the television show will air and an announcement will be in the paper. They told him it would be from two to four weeks from the day of the taping, which was last week.
To find out more about being an organ donor, visit www.organdonor.gov. It gives you access to all government information on organ and tissue donation and transplantation, including how to register to be a donor.

http://www.dailyiowegian.com/local/local_story_298094327.html

Photo: From the left in the above photo, taken after the taping of the television show, are Montel Williams, Jose Zaragoza, Zona Zaragoza, Tom Starr, Katrina Zaragoza, Christy Zaragoza, Mark Zaragoza and Lorma Sealy.