Kidney donor has heart to spare

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Jim Stingl | In My Opinion

Kidney donor has heart to spare

Posted: April 25, 2010

Most of us like to think we'd give a kidney to a family member or close friend who needed one. Maybe even to a co-worker or someone from church.

Sherry Reischel of West Bend offered one of hers to anyone at all who might require it.

And on Tuesday, that kidney was transplanted into a 72-year-old retired autoworker from Toledo, Ohio, named Louie Sudeth. He was a stranger to Sherry but certainly isn't anymore.

He sobbed when he talked about her. "It takes a person with a lot of love to do what she did. She's added years to my life. I've got part of her inside of me now."

The best news is that Sherry's donation is causing a chain reaction of donors and recipients, all of them strangers to each other.

This story starts a couple years ago when Sherry, 62, a kindergarten aide at Green Tree School in West Bend, was watching "ABC World News" as she washed the dishes.

They had a story about something called kidney paired donations. Here's how it works: Let's say I needed a kidney and a friend wanted to give one to me. Unfortunately, that friend was not a compatible donor. As a pair, we'd be entered into a computer. Eventually, I would receive a kidney from a stranger and my willing donor would give one to someone else.

What makes Sherry's gesture so generous is that she was not paired with a recipient whom she knows or loves. She contacted the Alliance for Paired Donation at the University of Toledo and offered to start a new chain with nothing to be gained for any friend or family member of hers.

"It just drew me," she said in a phone conversation from her bed at the university's medical center, where she was recovering from the surgery one day earlier.

"I thought, 'How great is that, that you can actually do it when you're alive and help people.' Studies have shown that a cadaver kidney works for an average of eight and a half years. With a live kidney, you can double that. I thought, 'Hey, I might as well get in on the celebration of it while I'm here.' "
Extending the chain

Louie has a friend who was willing to give a kidney to him, but she was not compatible. So her kidney was matched to a man in Greece. Some complications have arisen in making that international exchange a reality, which is unfortunate because that man's wife is a match for a Texas man, who has a sister-in-law willing to keep the chain going.

Michael Rees was the transplant surgeon for Sherry and Louie. He directs the Alliance for Paired Donation. The Web site is paireddonation.org.

Rees uses the word altruism to describe Sherry's selfless act.

"This is such a remarkable thing for someone to do," he said. "This chain never would have started without Sherry. What she did can help 10 or 20 or maybe 100 people if we can keep the chain going."

In the past decade, paired donation has resulted in about 800 kidney transplants in the United States. At the moment, the alliance has eight chains moving forward, and 30 people have received transplants through these chains, Rees said. Froedtert Hospital has signed on to the program and last week learned that a donor from Alabama is a match with a Wisconsin person needing a kidney.

The waiting list for kidneys in America is huge, about 85,000 people.

"We'd like to see paired donation become so big that we could see the list start to shrink," Rees said.

For Sherry, this is all about paying it forward. She and her husband, Robert, drove to Toledo. Their travel and medical expenses were covered.

"I've been very blessed. We've been married for 41 years, and we have four beautiful children and 10-plus grandchildren. I've just always been healthy and came from a kind, caring family. That's how we grew up, that you help people out who need help. So it didn't take a lot of decision on my part," she said.

By chance, Sherry and Louie ran into each other in a hospital waiting room before the surgery. They got to talking, and when they exchanged a few details they realized they were donor and recipient. Louie leaped to his feet and gave her a bear hug. He told her he was raised on a farm in Wisconsin, near Pembine, and that he moved to Ohio after the Navy to work in a plant that built Chevrolet transmissions.

Louie said he's had kidney trouble for 10 years and was on dialysis for seven months. The people at his church have been praying for a donor, and Louie likes to quote Proverbs to help explain what happened here: "When you strive to do my will, I will add days and years to your life."

Sherry's kidney started working immediately inside Louie, he said. He's feeling great and thankful beyond words.

Sherry's daughter, Jessica Hartjes from Appleton, and granddaughter Macy were present in the hospital room when Sherry and Louie visited for the first time after surgery. Louie's wife and family were there, too. The two patients held hands. They both said they plan to stay in touch and become like family.

Jessica said that when Sherry left the room, Louie called after her. "I love you," he said.

Call Jim Stingl at (414) 224-2017 or e-mail at jstingl@journalsentinel.com

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