Kidney donation saves two women's lives

Kidney donation saves two women's lives
Doctors discovered donor had an aneurysm during procedure
By Jennifer Broadwater

When Kathy Benton decided to donate a kidney to a friend from her church, she hoped to save a life. She ended up saving two — including her own.

Nearly four months after their May 19 surgery, Benton and her friend, Shelly Fox, still marvel at the experience.
But then, the kidney swap between the women was anything but ordinary.

Early in the donor process — which ended up taking more than two years because of multiple complications — Benton learned that the main artery leading to her right kidney had an aneurysm, a deadly defect that otherwise would have gone undetected.

“Nobody knows how long it had been there,” Benton, 59, of Ellicott City, said of the aneurysm. “She saved my life. She actually saved my life.”

Fox, 38, of Columbia, summed up the women’s experience in three words: “God totally intervened.”

The kidney transplant was Fox’s second. Her first transplanted kidney was donated by her mother in 1990. Just 19 at the time, Fox needed a new kidney because of focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, a condition that causes kidney scarring and leads to kidney failure.

That kidney lasted 17 years — during which time she graduated from college, married her longtime friend, Matt Fox, and gave birth to their son, Ethan, now 9.

But in 2006, she felt signs that the kidney was faltering, and in August 2007 she began dialysis.

When it became apparent that she needed a second kidney transplant, Fox began researching and searching.

She turned to CaringBridge, a nonprofit organization that provides free support and networking Web sites for people facing critical illnesses. She began by simply posting her need for a kidney and her blood type. Her site has since evolved into a journal that updates friends and relatives on her condition, and has helped forge an online support system with individuals across the country.

“How do you go about asking people for a kidney? How do you do that? Is it OK; are you crossing a line?” Fox recalled of the early stages of her search for a donor.

It turned out that she didn’t need to look far.

Benton, one of Fox’s friends from Bethany United Methodist Church, in Ellicott City, made the decision to be her donor in late 2006.

Fellow ‘Frogs’

Benton and Fox call themselves “Frogs.” It’s a moniker their small group at Bethany chose to avoid calling one another “church lady friends,” but which handily doubles as the acronym for “Fully Rely On God.”

Before serving as Fox’s donor, Benton had hoped to donate a piece of her liver to her brother, but he died of liver cancer before she had the chance.

“He died very quickly, so we didn’t get to do that,” Benton said. “When I was talking to Shelly about being a donor, I said, ‘Liver, kidney — what’s the difference? I have two (kidneys), you can have one.”

Giving Fox a kidney turned out to be particularly complicated because her previous transplant, three blood transfusions and pregnancy had contributed to a high level of antibodies in her blood. Antibodies are proteins used by the immune system that can attack foreign blood and organs they detect as a threat.

Both 2007 and 2008 turned out to be the years of the needle for Fox and Benton. Each month, sometimes weekly, the women had blood tests to see if the time was right for the surgery.

“She was scared of needles when she started this process,” Fox said of Benton.

For more than two years, the time was never quite right, although there were close calls.

Once, in June 2008, Benton already had an IV in her arm in preparation for surgery when doctors called off the operation because an infection had caused Fox’s antibody level to fluctuate.

Other donors rejected

While Benton and Fox continued their blood work, 13 other living donors, including relatives, friends, friends of friends and others located through CaringBridge and even Craig’s List attempted to give Fox a kidney. She also got a “cadaver call” — notice of a recently deceased organ donor. None was a good match.

“I’m like her sister. I was the best match out there,” Benton said.

At long last, on May 19 (the day before Fox’s 38th birthday), Drs. Stephen Bartlett and Matthew Cooper of the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore performed the transplant.

At the same time, doctors removed the artery with the aneurysm from Benton’s right kidney when they extracted it. (Kidney donors normally give the left kidney, because its longer veins make transplanting it easier.) They used a blood vessel from Fox’s thigh to hook up her new kidney, because Benton’s artery was not usable.

The pair acknowledge the support they received from members of Bethany church, including visits, meals, books and countless prayers.

Rev. David Simpson, senior pastor at Bethany church, called Benton’s organ donation an act of love and selflessness.
“For me, it’s one of those incredible moments that make the point of what our faith can do for us. I don’t have to preach it. It’s just there,” he said. “You could see prayers being answered. Not everyone is that lucky, but in this case we got to see a great victory.”

Worried about her son

Because of the drawn-out process, there were times when Fox wondered if the transplant would ever happen. She worried most about her son, she said.

“I couldn’t play with him like I wanted to. That’s when I started to feel desperate. I thought, ‘OK, God, where are you leading me?’ ” she said of the period when she was on dialysis. “Every night we’d say our prayers and he’d say, ‘Please God, give my mom a healthy kidney so she can be healthy and happy.’ ”

“Now I say thank-you prayers,” chimed in Ethan, a fourth-grader at Bollman Bridge Elementary School.

Since recovering from the surgery, Fox has seized the summer.

She resumed teaching Sunday school, coaching Ethan’s soccer team and working full-time.

Highlights of her summer have been a 12-mile bike ride on the BWI trail, near the airport, hiking at Calvert Cliffs State Park in southern Maryland, boating and even jumping on a water trampoline at Interlochen State Park Lake, in Michigan.

Each woman credits the other with saving her life.

“God’s plans happen as they should,” Fox said. “How do you say thank you? I can’t put it in words. There are no human words to tell her how I feel.”

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