How a kidney donation turned lethal

Tragic story of Vincent Liew's death begins with kidney donor Sandy Cabrera's final days

BY Michael J. Feeney, Katie Nelson and Corky Siemaszko
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Wednesday, May 19th 2010, 1:45 AM

The chain of events that ended with a Queens man dying of uterine cancer began at 6 a.m. on Feb. 20, 2002, when middle-aged mom Sandy Cabrera slipped off a chair and fell onto the floor.

Boyfriend Michael Daniels remembers the exact time and date because that was the moment he lost his "kindhearted woman" forever.

"I remember this like it was yesterday," he told a Daily News reporter outside his upstate Highland Falls home.

"The day that this all happened we were sitting at the computer table. It was like 6 o'clock in the morning. I was getting ready to go to work, and so was she."

The night before, Cabrera, 50, had complained of a headache "but she thought it was her sinuses," he said.

"That morning...she fell off her chair and I laughed at her," he said. "I said, 'What are you doing? Are you okay?' And then I noticed she wasn't okay."

The left side of Cabrera's body was numb and so was her face.

Daniels said he immediately called 911 and then her daughter, Dana Cabrera, who was a college student at SUNY-Albany.

An ambulance took her to St. Luke's Cornwall Hospital in Newburgh, but there was massive brain damage.

The next day, Cabrera's mom, Mildred Taylor, called Daniels and said she wouldn't recover.

"The brain doctor came out and showed everybody in the family the bleeding in her brain," said Daniels, who recalled seeing the MRI results.

"That's when they came up and asked about being an organ donor," he said. "Myself, Dana and Sandy's mom talked about it."

"I said, 'Dana, this is not my decision. It's your decision. But this is a good way for your mom's legacy to continue.'"

Mildred Taylor, 82, was not sold on the idea.

But to Dana Cabrera, who turned 27 today and lives in Brooklyn, "it just seemed like the right thing to do."

Her mother had raised her alone and the idea of her living on in others struck her as a fitting tribute.

"I was her No. 1 priority, she was always looking out for me," Dana said. "That generosity is part of the reason why I wanted to donate her organs, because that's the type of person she was."

After the family signed off, Cabrera's left kidney was transplanted into 37-year-old Vincent Liew.

Their gift turned toxic when the cells in the donated organ from an undetected case of uterine cancer spread throughout his body.

Cabrera apparently had no idea she had cancer, and her loved ones are aghast that their generosity turned out to be a death sentence for Liew.

"I haven't a clue what they did," said the donor's mother.

"If you're a doctor you would certainly know if it [the kidney] was good or not, wouldn't you? It should be checked before they put it in somebody else."

mfeeney@nydailynews.com

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/05/19/2010-05-19_the_tragic_story_of_the_donors_last_days.html