Man to donate kidney, and his brother, will receive one in kidney swap

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Man to donate kidney, and his brother, will receive one in kidney swap

Published: Monday, November 01, 2010

By PATRICK H. DONGES
The Saratogian

BOSTON — After being diagnosed with a rare liver disease in 1989 that required two liver transplants over eight years, 52-year-old Saratoga Springs native John Bujanowski will go under the knife again this week in Boston for a “kidney swap” procedure that involves donors and recipients from across the country.

Before John’s Nov. 2 surgery, his brother, Michael Bujanowski, will go into a Boston operating room at 7:30 a.m. His kidney will be removed and airlifted more than 1,000 miles to St. Louis, where a recipient will be waiting, in the first step of the day-long procedure.

As Michael’s kidney is being transplanted, a donor at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore will have their kidney removed and flown nearly 400 miles to Boston, where John will be prepared for his transplant.

A “good Samaritan” donor at Johns Hopkins will donate a kidney to John’s donor on the same day.

“I’m feeling pretty healthy right now,” John said Sunday while driving to Tufts Medical Center.

A secretary at Hoosic Valley Community Church in Schaghticoke and a former assistant pastor at Saratoga Bible Baptist Church, he suffers from primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC), the same auto-immunity disease that killed Chicago football star Walter “Sweetness” Payton.

While he said his second liver, received in 2002, is doing great, his kidneys were ravaged after a 2006 bout with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, caused by PSC, which required eight chemotherapy treatments. He has been on dialysis since 2007.

“I practically lived there,” John said of Tufts Medical Center, formally known as New England Medical Center, where he received livers in 2002 and 1994. “I have strong faith in the Lord and the hospital.”

“If I did not feel the confidence everyone here has been giving, I might be hesitant,” said Michael Bujanowski, already in Boston with his wife, Nancy, after the trip from their home in Wilton.

“It’s about time,” he said of his brother’s four-year wait for a transplant.

“It’s like a puzzle and it all had to be put into place,” said Nancy, adding that she is likely more worried than Michael about the surgery because of her experiences as a nurse. “I know everything they’re going to do to him, and he has no idea,” she joked.

According to statistics from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, male kidney transplant recipients between 50 and 64 years old with living donors have a nearly 97 percent one-year survival rate, which drops only to 82 percent after five years.

In 2008, 1,472 of 5,966, or almost 25 percent, of living donors gave a kidney to a sibling.

  http://www.saratogian.com/articles/2010/11/01/news/doc4cce310697b09988183831.txt?viewmode=fullstory