Friend Indeed

[okarol]

Friend Indeed

By Nikie Mayo
November 17, 2007 - 9:50PM

ORIENTAL — Michael Henries has always known he would need a kidney transplant. He didn’t expect that his new kidney would come from a mechanic co-worker he barely knew.

Born with Alport Syndrome, a genetic kidney disease, Henries knew that his grandmother and several uncles had transplants in the 1960s and 1970s. Doctors told him he would need a transplant by the time he was 18.

“I outlasted that, but you can’t beat it forever,” he said. Henries is 31. He lives in Oriental and works in the parts department at the Joe Alcoke car dealership in New Bern.

Just after Christmas, Henries had a tube put in his arm to prepare him for dialysis. When he returned to work, mechanic Brian “Donnie” Zelinski asked him if he had enjoyed his long vacation.

“Mike had been out of work for three or four days around Christmas, so I figured he was away visiting family,” Zelinski said. “He said, ‘Oh, no, it’s nothing like that.’ And then he rolled up his sleeve and showed me the marks on his arm.”

As they talked, the men found out they had the same blood type — O positive. Then, 35-year-old Zelinski, a single man from New Bern, made an offer to the co-worker he’d known for about six months.

“I told him he could have one of my kidneys,” Zelinski said simply. “I’ve always donated blood; this is just a much bigger step.”

Zelinski is a shy man who teaches fencing at a city recreation center in his spare time. He says he never thought of his offer as a life-changing decision, but only as the right thing to do.

Henries thanked him and moved on; he thought Zelinski was just being polite.

Some of Henries’ family members were tested as possible matches. His brother Richard was a match, but doctors discovered he is diabetic and has high blood pressure. They wouldn’t allow him to donate his kidney. A few weeks later, Henries came back to his co-worker.

“I said, ‘Hey man, were you serious?’ ” Henries said. “And he was.”

“There’s no history of organ failure in my family, so there’s no need to have something that I don’t really need,” Zelinski said. “Mike’s married and wants to have kids and a normal life.”

The men began the testing that was necessary before the transplant could happen. Zelinski found out that his blood pressure and blood sugar were both a little too high, so he lost 25 pounds in preparation for the operation.

“The way I see it, I’m healthier now because I donated a kidney,” he said.

They got the OK for the operation in August.

“It was a week after my birthday,” said Henries’ wife, Stephanie.

On Oct. 29, they had the surgery at Pitt County Memorial Hospital in Greenville.

Zelinski was told the operation would be harder on his body than on Henries’. Henries had been told he probably would still be on dialysis for a few days as his body “decided” to accept or reject the new organ.

“My family came in to see me and somebody said they expected me to look half dead, but instead, I looked like a brand-new man,” Henries said.

Zelinski said he felt some discomfort after the operation, but never what he considered pain.

And Henries’ body had accepted its new kidney by 4 p.m. the same day he got it.

“That was the best part of my day,” Zelinski said.

Henries is relaxing at home, playing guitar and thinking about fishing as he waits to go back to work. It may be three months before he can do that.

In the meantime, he’s dreaming of bacon and country ham.

“I’ve always had to watch what I eat,” he said. “I could never have bacon or country ham because of the salt. I’m not going to go crazy with it, but the doctors have said basically that I can have a normal diet, so I’m looking forward to that.”

Stephanie Henries said that while the two men were in the hospital, she always stopped in Zelinski’s room first.

“Donnie was on the first floor, so he was on my way up,” she said. “But it was more than that. He really gave Mike his life back. There aren’t words for that.”

Michael Henries says he has a word for it: Amazing.

“It’s amazing to me that somebody would step up like that,” he said. “It’s something you might expect from a best friend or a brother, but not from somebody who’s more or less a stranger. Donnie saw that this was a matter of life and death for me and he chose to help me live.”

http://www.newbernsj.com/news/henries_37614___article.html/zelinski_new.html

PHOTO: Michael Henries and his wife Stephanie enjoy a new kind of relaxing afternoon at their Pamlico County home — one free of worry since Michael’s successful kidney transplant at the end of October.
Liz Bowles/Sun Journal