Kidney swap couple anticipates futureKeywords: Kidney, transplant, living donor, Walter Reed, National Kidney Registry
By Sharon Renee Taylor
Stripe Staff Writer
By all accounts Joe and Yolanda Pinkowski are a perfect match and compliment. Joe is laid back and relaxed; Yolanda is outgoing and gregarious. With his 6-foot-2-inch frame, he can reach all the places high above the head of his 5-foot-tall wife.
The one thing that doesn’t match can mean the difference between life and death for the couple: their kidneys.
Doctors diagnosed Joe, a retired gunnery sergeant, with renal insufficiency in 1996 while he was still active duty with the Marines.
“I felt like I got hit with a baseball bat with the flu — without the sniffles and the cough. I really felt bad,” Joe said. “You feel drained; you have no energy.”
As his kidney function continued to plummet, the diagnosis took a toll on the lifestyle of the inseparable pair who has done everything together for the last 26 years: shop for groceries, play golf, travel.
“What don’t we do together?,” Joe asked.
“He doesn’t like going to the mall, but he does it for me; I don’t like motorcycles, but I do it for him. We compromise,” Yolanda said.
Life changed. The couple sold the Harley Davidson Heritage Softtail Classic they rode all over Okinawa, Japan. Now, the two can’t even walk together for very long.
“I’m doing a lot of stuff on my own,” she said. “I miss him.”
Yolanda knew her husband’s health had taken a turn for the worse when he arrived at the airport to pick her up after she returned from a two-week visit to her native Guadalajara, Mexico — an annual trip the two normally take together.
“He was pushing himself,” Yolanda said.
By Sunday, he couldn’t walk. The couple said that September emergency room visit was a wake-up call.
In time, the couple began regular trips to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. His kidney function had dropped to 20 percent. Joe was placed on the hospital’s transplant list. Then came the tears and three long days of tests.
As soon as the diminutive Yolanda learned her husband needed a kidney to avoid spending the rest of his life on dialysis, she knew she wanted to give him one of her kidneys. She said her hopes were not dashed when tests showed she was not blood type compatible. Her weight and family history of Diabetes raised additional concerns. The optimist said the alternative was never an option.
“He’s the love of my life. We have our good days and bad days. It never crossed my mind,” she said. “I’m always positive; we’re going to make it. I picture myself — me and him — growing old together.”
As the Walter Reed Organ Transplant Service team stepped into action to find other options for the couple, Yolanda secretly began training the next several months to qualify as a kidney donor to avoid a second disappointment for her husband.
She worked with a nutritionist to change her eating habits and dropped 14 pounds. She gave up sodas and replaced red meat with chicken and turkey. She ate more vegetables and fruit. Yolanda even found a way to curb her big sweet tooth — she gave up coffee.
She said Joe was concerned when she refused the Starbucks coffee he drove five miles to bring her each weekend.
Yolanda said she was feeling better and her next set of tests all came back perfect: she was eligible to donate in a kidney paired exchange, or swap. The Walter Reed Organ Transplant Service Team would collaborate with civilian hospitals in the National Capital Region to perform the first-ever transplant involved in a kidney swap chain for a U.S. military treatment facility.
Yolanda’s kidney would go to a transplant patient at Georgetown University Hospital, and Joe would receive a kidney from a donor at Washington Hospital Center. The Alexandria, Va., couple joined more than two dozen patients from local civilian hospitals participating in a complex kidney swap chain, matching compatible donors with transplant patients.
For the couple that shared everything together, the eve of their surgeries Wednesday brought a flood of feelings: the same fears, the same anxiety, the same nervous anticipation.
“It was scary for the both of us to be in the hospital at the same time — that he can’t help. He can’t take care of me; I can’t take care of him,” said Yolanda. “I feel more comfortable knowing that he’s going to get a kidney. He’s not waiting anymore.”
Walter Reed urologist, Col. (Dr. )G. Bennett Stackhouse, stopped in to explain the surgery he would perform the next day with his patient, Yolanda, and answered last-minute questions. Joe padded his way down the hall from his Ward 65 room to join her.
“I’m her doctor,” Stackhouse quipped. He would operate on Yolanda in the morning; Lt. Col. (Dr.) Edward Falta, chief of the Walter Reed organ transplant service, would perform the surgery on Joe later that day.
The three shared a couple of laughs. Yolanda touched her husband’s arm.
“The great thing about working as an Army doctor, I get to take care of heroes everyday,” Stackhouse told Yolanda. “You’re definitely a hero.”
Earlier, the urologist had explained the risks of her sacrifice: infection, pain, scarring, even death. “She’s very brave,” Stackhouse said.
Yolanda hugged her doctor before he left and the room filled with nursing staff.
“The staff here is extraordinary,” Joe said. “Everyone is on the same sheet. It’s very reassuring. Everything is smooth here. They take the time.”
“Everyone knows our name,” Yolanda added.
There was the option for a civilian hospital, but the couple said they chose Walter Reed.
“The biggest pat on the back goes to the staff. They’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty,” Joe said. “These folks care here and you feel it.”
A duffle bag in a chair contains a frame with the family’s portrait: daughters Jessica, 25, and Crystal, 18, with Joe and Yolanda flanked by their 5-year-old granddaughter Marisela and 5-month-old grandson Leandro. The family spends every weekend and vacations together.
This Thanksgiving their daughters will prepare the family’s meal as the couple recovers. Yolanda looks forward to the future. She and Joe will ride a motorcycle again.
“It’ll be that way again shortly,” she said.
11/19/2010
http://www.wramc.amedd.army.mil/NewsAndEvents/media/resource/Lists/wrarticles/DispForm.aspx?Id=715&
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