Family appeals for a kidney to help beloved father

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Family appeals for a kidney to help beloved father
Danbury man hopes for a new kidney to provide him with a new lease on life
By Robert Miller
Staff Writer
Updated: 03/30/2009 11:13:47 PM EDT

In his successful career as a banker, Steve Cohen of Danbury was a take-charge guy when it came to helping charities.

"He raised $2 million to $3 million for the American Diabetes Association," said his daughter Hyra Cohen.

But Cohen's own 25-year struggle with diabetes is now taking its toll on his body. He had a full-blown heart attack eight years ago requiring open-heart surgery to repair.

Because diabetics can have wounds that are slow to heal, he's needed 60 hyperbaric sessions at the Wound Center at Danbury Hospital for a wound on his foot.

And for the past year, he's been on dialysis, going three times a week to the dialysis center at the hospital, where he sits for four hours at a time while a machine filters his blood.

Cohen, a few weeks away from turning 65, is upbeat about his health.

"I've lost 50 pounds," he said. "I feel great."

But his family members have a different opinion about that. They remember a man of great vitality who has now been terribly slowed by kidney disease.

"He's a shell of the person he used to be," Hyra Cohen said.

His family cannot correct his diabetes. Nor can his wife or two daughters donate a kidney to him -- his wife is not a match, his two daughters have medical issues that make donating one impossible.

With no other options open other than sitting around waiting, Hyra Cohen is now making an appeal to the public. If there is someone out there who is disposed to
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donating a kidney to her father, the family would like to meet that person as quickly as possible.

"My big mouth is my biggest asset," she said, laughing.

Toward that end, she's enlisted two local politicians -- State Sen. Michael McLachlan and State Rep. Joseph Taborsak, D-Danbury -- to help her spread the word

And, in turn, they are encouraging people to sign up to become organ donors on their motor vehicle licenses. The more organs available, the more they'll help people in need.

"You hear about people who need a donation all the time," McLachlan said. "They can be next-door neighbors or friends. I applaud what the Cohens are doing."

"It's an extremely difficult thing for the Cohens and I feel for them," Taborsak said. "You can be left in a waiting pattern in the health care system, and that's a very lonely place."

Cohen has been in the banking business since was a teenager. His last job was as a banker with the Washington Mutual Bank.

In September 2008, JP Morgan Chase took over Washington Mutual's banking business for $1.9 billion after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. closed Washington Mutual down. It was the largest bank failure in U.S. history.

"They never told us anything," Cohen said.

Along with his long days at the bank, Cohen was involved in a dozen civic and charitable causes in Westchester County. The walls of his den at the Sterling Woods are filled with pictures of Cohen posing with the likes of former Yankee manager Joe Torre, Knicks basketball stars Walt Frazier and Earl Monroe, country singer Wynona Judd, and former U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole.

"That was when she was president of the American Red Cross," Cohen said of his photo with Dole.

Diabetes is a disease that restricts the flow of blood in the body. That can lead to kidney failure, which Cohen had been dealing with for years.

"He kept this from us for a very, very long time," his daughter Hyra said. "We didn't know until last year."

And her father's illness has taken its toll on his family as well.

"My son, at 3 years old, knows more about renal functions than most adults,'' she said.

Ideally, Hyra Cohen said, the family would like to find a donor with a blood type that matches Steve Cohen -- B, B-positive, O or O-positive.

But she said any organ donation, even if it goes to someone else on the donor list, will move her father up higher on that list and increase his chances of getting a kidney. That, in turn, could make him whole again.

"It will be improved 1,000 times over," she said of her father's quality of life. "He doesn't want charity. He doesn't want anything except to live."

Contact Robert Miller at

bmiller@newstimes.com

or at (203) 731-3345.
The Cohen campaign To learn more about the Cohen family's campaign to encourage someone to donate a kidney to Steve Cohen, go to the campaign's Web site at www.PleaseSaveMyPapa.com or e-mail Hyra Cohen at pleasesavemypapa@yahoo.com

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