Iowa City man donates kidney in extraordinary leap of faith

[okarol]

Updated November 27. 2008 8:46AM
Iowa City man donates kidney in extraordinary leap of faith
By Cindy Hadish
The Gazette
cindy.hadish@gazettecommunications.com

IOWA CITY — Most living donors give an organ to a spouse, a relative, a friend.

Not Ed Grattan.

Blessed, as he said, with good health and two functioning kidneys, the Iowa City man decided to donate one of them.

To no one in particular.

"Because of God's love for us. That's why I did it," Grattan, 48, said Wednesday. "That's the big, overarching, driving reason."

Since record-keeping began 20 years ago, only 597 other people nationwide have done what Grattan did, out of more than 440,000 donors.

The Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network calls the category "non-biological, unrelated, anonymous."

University Hospitals in Iowa City, which performed the transplant, calls it by another name. Spokesman Tom Moore said Grattan was the hospital's first anonymous altruistic donor.

"All live donors are altruistic," Dr. Alan Reed, head of the UI Organ Transplant Center, said. "It's not a huge number, but there are people who feel very much committed to helping others, to the point they're willing to give them a body part. To me, it's an unbelievable gift."

Grattan underwent numerous tests, including a psychological review to ensure he was a willing donor and aware of risks. On Nov. 13, the transplant team made a 4-inch incision and removed one of his kidneys.It was transferred immediately to a patient on the organ waiting list.

Grattan only knows the patient was male. He's OK with not knowing the recipient.

"I hope he gets to eat a lot" at Thanksgiving, he said with a broad grin.

Business plaques, photos of his niece and nephew and a huge Chicago Cubs towel hang on the walls of his office in North Liberty, where Grattan works as regional manager for Primerica Financial Services.

He carries a coffee cup — his "big vice" — and notes that no, the organ donation was not an atonement for his sins.

Grattan, who is single and has no children, was fairly certain other family members — who also enjoy good health — wouldn't need his kidney.

A former triathlete, at 6 foot, 2 inches and 230 pounds, Grattan decided last year he wanted to get back in shape.

He competed in triathlons this summer and trimmed down to a fit 195 pounds.

"My thinking was, do some triathlons, donate a kidney, do some more triathlons," he said. "I hope other athletes will see this as an opportunity" to donate.

After four days in the hospital, Grattan feels healthy, though he needs to hold off on racquetball for about six weeks.

Reed, with the transplant center, said most people can live a long life with one kidney. All donors are told of the risks, he said, "but what we know pales in comparison to what we don't know. This is a poorly studied area."

As of this week, Grattan has no regrets. "Not yet," he said with a laugh. "We'll see how I feel in a year."

Paul Sodders, spokesman for the Iowa Donor Network, said he takes a few calls monthly from people willing to donate an organ.

The network only handles deceased donors, so he refers callers to University Hospitals or Methodist and Mercy Medical Center in Des Moines, the three transplant centers in Iowa besides Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Iowa City.

The need is great.

Just this month, the number of Iowans waiting for an organ surpassed 500 for the first time, to 522. Last year, 415 Iowans at this time were waiting for a heart, kidney, liver, pancreas or lung.

Nationwide, numbers also reached a milestone, with more than 100,000 people — 100,546 — on the list. Most are waiting for a kidney.

Many people mark organ donation on their driver's license, but Grattan said he learned that only a small number of people — because of traumatic injury or disease — can donate in death. "Here was a way I could guarantee that," he said. "It was a way I could control the odds."

A member of Parkview Evangelical Free Church in Iowa City, Grattan was inspired by a newspaper article about Kathy Duttlinger, a greenhouse caretaker at University Hospitals. Duttlinger donated a kidney in 2006 to a fellow employee she met on a hospital elevator.

"That just stuck with me," Grattan said. "I thought, someday I'll do something like that."

Duttlinger, 51, of Iowa City, said she got chills hearing she had inspired Grattan. "I just did it because I thought it was the right thing to do," she said.

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