Retired coach shows love with his kidney

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Retired coach shows love with his kidney
Former Immokalee head football coach John Weber donates organ to save life of his wife, Darlene

By DANA OPPEDISANO
1:46 a.m., Sunday, May 18, 2008

This year, May 1 wasn’t about helmets and hashmarks.

It wasn’t a deadline for filing paperwork or a day of shaking hands with future stars at Immokalee High in the first day of spring practices.

The first day of May, for so long a high school football holiday for John Weber, this time was about fulfilling a promise.

It was about living up to that part about "in sickness and health."

About being there for the woman who’d always been there for him, no matter how long the drive or how desolate the stadium.

May 1, 2008, was about Weber’s wife, Darlene, and that made the fear somehow easier to live with.

John Weber’s finally sleeping again.

It’s been 17 days since he donated a kidney to his wife, a procedure the surgeon — the same one who performed Darlene’s first transplant 17 years earlier — immediately placed in his top five most challenging.

"One of the toughest he’s ever taken out," John Weber says without a trace of pride. "He said, ‘I promise you, you’re sore.’ I said, ‘You don’t have to tell me about it.’ "

The retired Immokalee coach stifles a laugh as he remembers this, his hand involuntarily crawling toward the 4- to 5-inch scar along his left side.

"I can’t breathe real deep yet," he says. "He said they pulled the ribs apart, jacked ’em every which way possible. I’ve had fractured ribs before, and this is exactly the way it feels. You’re better off having broken ribs than you are fractured. It’s the same amount of pain."

A few feet away, Darlene laughs.

They can do that now that the pain has subsided. Still, every move he makes stretches the 50-something stitches in his side.

They don’t always tell you that a transplant is harder on the donor.

"I woke up Saturday (after the transplant), showered and sat in a chair all day. He couldn’t move," Darlene Weber says.

"It was a miracle. I’ve got so much more energy. Before this, I would go in the kitchen, do something for five or 10 minutes and I had to sit down. I was exhausted. I’m cooking now."

Her husband can’t contain a smile.

"I knew how bad she felt because I knew how active she’d been," John says. "It’s really frustrating when there’s nothing you can do. To see her get around and feel the way she feels, I have no regrets whatsoever in what we did."

For years, the Webers didn’t even know it could be done.

  

John Weber had been saying it forever, since shortly after the day their lives changed all those years ago.

Darlene had gone in for a routine blood transfusion when, in her words, "something happened."

She went into anaphylactic shock, possibly caused by the transfusion, and needed two kidney transplants after the first organ didn’t take.

Doctors told her she’d get 10 years, at most, with the new kidney, and her husband has repeated his pledge over the years.

"Forever," Darlene says, "he’d say, ‘Well, I’d give you a kidney.’ "

They never knew it was a possibility until earlier this year, after Darlene had started at-home dialysis and doctors deemed her healthy enough — no small feat, considering the degenerative effects of her kidney medication has led to three hip replacements and another on her knee — to get back on the transplant waiting list.

She was leafing through some information from the hospital when she came across the startling news that donors didn’t have to be blood relatives.

It was an earth-shattering discovery, considering there was "zero chance," as John said, that Darlene would accept a kidney from either of their children, and the constant fear that her age (62) and health history would put her far down the list of would-be recipients.

They agreed to move forward with the transplant, but the issue was far from settled.

The Webers underwent a series of tests, everything from tuberculosis to heart stress to blood-type compatibility, before doctors endorsed the procedure. Even then, though, it wasn’t a certainty.

They underwent their fourth and final tissue test two days before the surgery, and the Webers weren’t told, for certain, that Darlene could receive one of John’s kidneys until the night before the operation.

"You ride a roller coaster," he said. "You’re ready to go and then something happens. That was more frustrating than anything in this whole process. There were so many unknowns."

Not the least of which, of course, was how both would respond to the transplant.

  

The last thing John remembered was Darlene’s face — a little scared, like he was — peering across a few empty rooms and through a couple panes of hospital glass.

"We just waved," John said. "They wheeled me in first, and she was the last thing I remember seeing. Then they gave me some stuff and I went into the operating room."

He didn’t see Darlene again for two days, instead getting word of his wife’s condition through their children, son Jay and daughter Jenny, who shuffled between floors at Southwest Florida Regional Medical Center.

Finally, on Saturday, Jay rolled his father’s wheelchair into Darlene’s room, a reunion that Darlene starts to describe but, ultimately, she gives up trying to find words that have for so long gone unspoken.

"He’s always been so caring," she says. "I’m sure there are men that, the first time my kidney failed, would have said, ‘Adios, I’m not gonna deal with this.’ He’s just ... you know, that ‘in sickness and in health.’... Literal."

  

It’s easy to believe Weber when he swears that he hasn’t thought about football.

Sure, this is the first spring in 37 years that he isn’t planning for an upcoming season, but the guy does have other things on his mind.

"I know that when fall comes," he said, "there’s going to be quite a pull, but right now it’s not bothering me as much as if I was healthy."

He retired at an emotional ceremony on Jan. 7, a public display that took place a few hours after he told his players the same news through tear-filled eyes.

Weber had spent the final 23 years of a 36-year career in Southwest Florida, the last dozen molding himself into a local legend in the football-crazed hearts of Immokalee residents. He led the Indians to the 2004 Class 2A state championship and to undefeated regular seasons in 2000 and 2006.

He’s talked to Israel Gallegos, his successor and former assistant, a few times since the transplant, mostly just to check in and see how things are going.

The Webers were touched when Gallegos and his coaching staff took them to dinner the week before the transplant and presented him with a glass-encased football, the Indians logo and Weber’s numerous achievements prominently displayed on its side.

It was the sort of gesture that, wins and losses aside, convinced the Webers that the program they love so dearly remains in good hands.

"I’m most proud," Weber said, "not of the wins and losses, but that we always played with class. There’s a difference between winning with class and winning at any cost. I always said I’d never stoop to do that. I was going to play by the principles that I believed in. I don’t know if they were right or not, but I’m very proud of the fact that we always did that out there."

The phone has practically been ringing off the hook.

Coaches he’s known for decades, players that have since had their own kids, recent grads who are making names for themselves in college — they’ve all called, some several times, to check in.

Ohio State coach Jim Tressel, who’s got one of Weber’s most gifted in linebacker Brian Rolle, called over Christmas break to see how Darlene was feeling.

"Humbling, in a lot of ways," Weber said of the support. "You shape a lot of lives and, hopefully, you make the right impression on a lot of people."

If you know the Webers, you’re not surprised that talk of watching Friday night games from the stands gets them more emotional than talk about the transplant.

Theirs was, after all, a bond built as much on a football field as off it, where Darlene grew into an expert and their postgame embrace became as routine as the halftime show.

In retrospect, Weber said he knew Immokalee’s playoff loss to Naples in November would be the final game of his almost four-decade career. He’d already decided that Darlene’s health was the most important thing in his life now.

"Football was my life for more years than I care to think about," he said. "As important as it’s been, there are a lot of things that are more important now. It’s shaped a lot of young people, though, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything."

Darlene nods, fighting back tears.

"I think we kind of knew," she said of that loss the day after Thanksgiving. "Our daughter and her family were there. I think, in the fall, it will hit us that it’s over."

  

The pill bottles are arranged on the counter in no particular order. Some white, some that scary pharmacy orange.

Darlene takes 28 in all. She lists the medications taken, her weight and blood pressure into a binder she’ll bring to the doctor’s office twice a week.

They’re both aware that, one day, Darlene’s body may reject John’s kidney.

"This is my last chance and you just pray that it lasts my lifetime," she says. "There’s no timetable (for determining success). Ten years from now, I could reject it. I was still taking anti-rejection medicine the day I went into the hospital for the (first) kidney."

Of course, doctors told her she’d get no more than 10 years with that first transplant. Then they told her it could be years before she found a donor.

Miracle, in this case, is not too strong of a word.

"Absolutely," she says, "it’s a miracle to me."

The couple plans to return to their teaching positions in the fall. John teaches American history at Immokalee and Darlene is an English teacher at Lehigh Senior High. They hope to retire next year.

John is 63 and Darlene is a year younger. The Webers insist they’re young enough to enjoy that kidney together.

Maybe they’ll take a trip, she said, and John will almost certainly spend more time with his racing dogs. They’ll definitely visit more with their five grandchildren.

And, of course, they expect to be at Gary Bates Stadium on Fridays to watch their beloved Indians.

Right now, though, cabin fever is setting in.

This week Darlene playfully suggested taking the car to Publix before their son Jay — their caregiver the past two weeks — got out of bed.

"John said, ‘Your son would kill you.’ "

They both laugh, the coach’s hand again finding its way to the lower left side of his Immokalee T-shirt.

He doesn’t have to tell you that the pain is a small price to pay.

"The chances of our kidneys matching were not nearly as good as the chances of them not matching," he says.

"It’s a miracle. It really is. You talk about winning a state title and all the wins? If we pull this off and this thing works, this is, by far, the greatest thing I’ve done in my lifetime."

http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2008/may/18/retired-coach-shows-love-his-kidney/