Daughter to donate kidney to dadBy Jennifer Meyer of the Muscatine Journal
WILTON, Iowa — Jeanette Bell is giving her father something he has gone without for more than half her life.
Bell, 33, chokes up and wipes away tears when she tells how one of her kidneys will spare him the exhausting dialysis he has undergone for the past three years.
“It’s just hard to see your parent, especially one you’re close to, deteriorate right in front of you and there’s nothing you can do for him,” said Bell of rural Wilton.
“Well, now there’s something.”
Doctors at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics will remove Bell’s kidney today and transplant it into her father, Dick Johnson.
Johnson, 56, of Muscatine, said his kidneys shut down three years ago while he was working as a welder at a biodeisel plant under construction in Glenville, Minn.
Doctors aren’t certain why his kidneys failed, but said one possible explanation is a hard blow to the kidneys. He believes he may have been injured when he was pinned between two machines at H.J. Heinz in Muscatine, where he worked for 20 years.
“I told a doctor one time I wouldn’t know how to feel good. I was sick over 20 years,” Johnson said.
He suffered two heart attacks believed to have been caused by high blood pressure resulting from kidney failure.
For the past three years, he spent his Mondays,
Wednesdays and Fridays receiving dialysis for more than four hours at Unity Hospital in Muscatine.
“It just drains so much out of him,” Bell said. “There’s times he’s lucky to make it out of there to his car and get home.”
A catheter in his chest, used in dialysis, has been replaced 11 times.
He received his last dialysis treatment Wednesday.
“I dread it. I was glad (for it) to be my last day,” Johnson said.
He will remain at the hospital for the next three to five days.
Doctors say Bell — who is the mother of 12-year-old Morgann, William, 10, and Nickolas, 7 — should be able to return home on Sunday. She will be off of work as a certified nursing assistant at Carrington Place in Muscatine for six to eight weeks.
“I’m getting a little nervous, but I’m excited too,” Bell said Thursday at her home on Taylor Avenue.
Johnson, who owns a mobile home on Stewart Road in Muscatine, has been living with Bell and her husband Casey, but also stayed at times with his other children since he became ill. Bell’s sister, Melissa Johnson, 30, will care for their divorced father at her home in Muscatine while he recovers from the transplant surgery.
Bell said doctors asked her and her sister, and their brothers Chad Johnson, 26, and Jamie Johnson, 23, both of Muscatine, if they were willing to donate a kidney to their father.
“Of course, we all were,” she said. “I guess I was just the one who got my paperwork in before anybody else.”
She found out one year ago that she was a match, but Johnson said complications from a colonoscopy pushed back the surgery.
Johnson said the transplant “means everything to me.”
“I get my life back. It’s pretty hard sitting back and doing nothing for three years,” he said.
After being on disability, he looks forward to returning to work, swimming, hunting and fishing with his 10 grandchildren.
“I just want to see my dad happy is all,” Bell said. “He’s done so much for me growing up that I want to do everything I can.”
Reporter contact information
Jennifer Meyer: 563-262-0525
Jennifer.meyer@muscatinejournal.com
Details
Relatives established a fund in Jeanette Bell’s name at Central State Bank for people to help with expenses while Bell is off of work for 6-8 weeks after donating a kidney to her father, Dick Johnson of Muscatine.
Central State Bank has offices in Muscatine at 301 Iowa Ave., 1521 Park Ave., 401 Grandview Ave. and inside Hy-Vee on the U.S. Highway 61 Bypass; and at 710 W. Fifth St. in Wilton.
http://www.muscatinejournal.com/articles/2008/11/14/news/doc491daad6b3e4f486589004.txt
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