Matched for life

[okarol]

Matched for life

March 31, 2009
Brent Davis
RECORD STAFF

KITCHENER

Over the course of a relationship, couples exchange many gifts -- some funny, some practical, some heartfelt.

It's safe to say none is more significant than the one Judy Lettau will give to her husband tomorrow.

In the course of two surgical procedures, Lettau will give Mark Winter the gift of life, in the form of one of her kidneys.

It will free Winter, who has kidney disease, from a dialysis regimen that lasts about six hours a day, three days a week.

It will remove the worry that Winter, a Type 1 diabetic, would still likely get sicker and sicker over time on dialysis.

In short, it will give the Kitchener couple their lives back.

"Our lives, for the last 15, 16, 17 months, have been very different than what we knew before," Winter says.

"There's a lot of things you can't do," he says.

"Judy's had to bear the brunt of a lot of this."

Diagnosed with diabetes at 16, the 52-year-old Winter learned he had kidney disease in the fall of 2007, and was placed on dialysis in January,

Finding a spousal donor for a kidney is relatively rare.

The couple were told there have been fewer than 200 kidney transplants performed between husband and wife nationwide.

When Lettau, 50, first decided to undergo tests to see if she would be a viable donor, she never imagined Winter would be the recipient.

The first meeting with a transplant co-ordinator came two months later.

In fact, her interest in live organ donation was piqued by a newspaper article even before Winter went on dialysis.

When she learned Winter would need a transplant, Lettau thought that, at the very least, her donation to another patient would move her husband up the waiting list.

And that wait, for many patients, can be excruciatingly long -- anywhere from four to nine years, on average, for living or cadaver kidney transplants in Ontario.

The couple has five children from previous marriages, but Winter's blood relatives had already been ruled out as potential donors.

The surprising news came about a year ago that Lettau was a match. "I was not expecting to hear that," she says.

A year of testing followed. It hasn't been easy -- despite the fact he passed a stress test with flying colours, a routine angiogram turned up a number of blockages in Winter's arteries, leading to triple bypass surgery last September.

Tomorrow's procedures in Hamilton are scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. when Lettau's left kidney is removed by laparoscopy. Doctors have told Winter he'll be feeling "like a million bucks" within hours of his 12:30 p.m. operation.

Winter began taking anti-rejection drugs last week -- he'll continue on them for life. Most patients like Winter spend six to nine days in hospital after the transplant; his wife should be home in two to four.

"I have the utmost of respect for Judy," Winter says. "I think it's really gutsy."

Winter faces another transplant down the road. He will be placed on the pancreas waiting list, an operation that will make him essentially diabetes-free. "I'm told I'm young enough, healthy enough, to undergo two surgeries," he says.

Winter hopes his story will serve to highlight the importance of organ donation -- a subject, he fears, many people don't take the time to think about.

"They call it the gift of life, and it's so apt. That's exactly what it is."

bdavis@therecord.com

http://news.therecord.com/article/512461