Our Transplant Story

Hi all its been a long while since I've posted, life has been crazy. This is our transplant story.

Richard was diagnosed with End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) Feb. 23 2008, he had 5% kidney function. When transplantation was first discussed we were told that blood type O (Richards type) was about an 8 year wait for a cadaver kidney. For the first year after Richards diagnosis we looked for a type O living donor. After one of our type O donors was unable to donate because of medical testing; we were desperately searching for another donor.

Richards mom who had wanted to donate from the very beginning but is type A, happened to be reading through the UCSF Medical Center website and found that they perform 'Blood Type Incompatible' transplants. We read about it as much as possible, and thought that would be Richards best chance to get a kidney sooner - rather than later. I have to mention that by this point Richard had zero kidney function, and that he had done hemodialysis for the first year, and peritoneal dialysis for the second. We talked with our transplant coordinator about doing the blood type incompatible transplant. We talked with the head of the program, and he decided that we could go that route. It was one of the happiest days!

Here is the link to the UCSF Med Center website that talks about the Blood Type Incompatible: http://www.ucsfhealth.org/adult/special/k/113181.html

Once we were in San Fran, Richard started the process of preparing his body to be able to accept his moms type A kidney. To start Richard had to receive a dose via IV of Rituximab - which is used (in this case) as an anti-rejection medication. The next step was 5 treatments of plasmapheresis, which is the process of removing the plasma from the blood and replacing it with albumin (protein from the blood); his last treatment he received Fresh Frozen Plasma (FFP) to help his body recover faster after surgery. The day before surgery he received one more dose of the rituximab.

We went to the hospital at 5:30am on February 11, 2010. The surgery actually started at about 9:30am by about 12:30pm the surgery was finished, and Richard and his mom had done awesome. His mom was able to sit up and walk a little bit the very first night. Richard sat up and walked the next day. Richards mom was released from the hospital 3 days later; and Richard was released 5 days later.

With any transplant there is a possibility of rejection, and this was no different, it was slightly higher but not by much. If there had been rejection it would have happened within the first 15 minuets of the organ being attached to Richards body. There is still a possibility of rejection even now but with every month that passes it gets slightly less and less. Richard is now 3 months post and everyone is doing great!