'Kidney chain' donors, recipients meet

'Kidney chain' donors, recipients meet
Transplant patients, donors get rare opportunity to meet
By Christopher Snowbeck
csnowbeck@pioneerpress.com
Updated: 11/24/2010 12:06:45 AM CST

Five kidney donors and the five recipients got together at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis on Tuesday. From left, they are Nicholle Hayes, Shannon Peterson, Sheila Dalen, Mark, Ann Agrimson, Pricilla Deshayes, John Tracy, Robert Howden, Heather Reinke and Matthew Kleve. (Pioneer Press: Scott Takushi)
Transplant patient Shannon Peterson of Minot, N.D., meets his kidney donor, Nicholle Hayes of Bloomington, on Tuesday. Hayes act this year set off a so-called kidney chain. (PIONEER PRESS: SCOTT TAKUSHI)

Bring together five kidney donors and their organ recipients for the first time, and you can expect to hear plenty of people giving thanks.

But the banter can be pretty good, too.

As Matthew Kleve, 36, of South St. Paul talked Tuesday about how much more energy he has with his new kidney, his donor Heather Reinke, 37, of Elk River wanted to know: "Do you like to shop for shoes and Coach handbags now, too?"

Across the room, it was recipient Pricilla Deshayes, 51, of Emily, who was making the jokes.

"I'm going to keep her close to me," she said of donor Ann Agrimson, 48, of Minneapolis. "I'm going to put her on the list for future parts just in case I need them."

The scene played out at a luncheon at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, which was one of three medical centers in July that played a role in the region's first-ever "kidney chain." Hospitals don't normally introduce organ donors and recipients, but in this case, all the patients wanted to meet one another. So the hospitals made it happen.

The complicated sequence of five transplants is a rarity, since kidney chains are tough for hospitals to coordinate and require a great deal of trust among patients.

Even so, kidney chains are likely to become more common as hospitals look for ways to stretch the limited supply of kidneys available for transplant.

Doctors have performed more than 11,300 kidney transplants in the U.S. this year, but an additional 87,150 people still await
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new kidneys.

"I feel like if people knew how easy it was (to donate), we'd wipe out that whole waiting list," said Nicholle Hayes, 34, of Bloomington, who was one of the five donors.

Hayes played a unique role in the kidney chain. After watching a relative die from kidney failure about 16 months ago, Hayes decided she couldn't just sit back and let others suffer with the disease.

She decided to become a "nondirected donor," meaning she would give one of her kidneys without a particular recipient in mind. Hayes is one of more than 60 people at the University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview who have opted to become nondirected donors over the past decade or so.

Donating a kidney is no walk in the park. It comes with small scars, a couple days in the hospital and a week or so of pain after the procedure.

But Hayes said the ordeal was well worth the effort. As a mother of four children from the ages of 4 to 9, Hayes said, she had three miscarriages in her early attempts to start a family. Joyful at being able to have children, she has looked for ways to help others ever since.

"It's just my way of saying thank you and showing how grateful I am for all the health and love I have in my life," Hayes said. "We have enough to share."

In addition to nondirected donors, the other key ingredient to kidney chains is one that's not hard to find. Many patients who need kidney transplants have donors who are willing to give but are biologically incompatible with their intended recipients.

Deshayes, the witty kidney recipient from Emily, was a case in point.

Her son-in-law, John Tracy, 40, of Eagan, was perfectly willing to donate his kidney, but he wasn't a match with Deshayes. What's more, transplant coordinators feared they would have trouble finding any suitable donor because Deshayes had developed antibodies over her lifetime that made finding a match difficult.

That's where Agrimson came in. Doctors determined that she and Deshayes were what's called a "six-antigen match" — an extremely unlikely occurrence for strangers. Many siblings, in fact, aren't even six-antigen matches.

So, Deshayes turned out to be an ideal beneficiary of the kidney chain.

"My husband plays the lottery, and I told him, 'Don't even bother anymore, we've already won,' " she said.

As Deshayes underwent her procedure at Abbott Northwestern, her son-in-law donated a kidney that was given to Robert Howden, 65, of Wrenshall. Howden was a patient at the University of Minnesota, where five years ago he underwent a lung transplant.

"I feel wonderful," Howden said Tuesday. "It's a 100 percent difference."

There's an element of risk in kidney chains because donors can back out at any time — thus breaking the chain after their own donation partner has received a kidney. Of all the patients in the kidney chain, Howden was arguably at greatest risk of suffering that fate.

That's because his donation partner — Reinke — actually donated her kidney several days before her uncle underwent what turned out to be the final operation in the chain. Doctors say the risk of a donor "reneging" is the most controversial aspect of kidney chains, but Reinke said Tuesday that the possibility didn't trouble her.

"I just knew it would work out. It was a gut feeling," she said.

The series of transplants brought participants together in strange ways. Agrimson said she agreed to donate after reading on the social networking website Facebook that an old friend needed a kidney transplant.

When she learned she wasn't a match for her friend, Agrimson recalled seeing an episode of the TV medical drama "Grey's Anatomy" that showed a fictional case where strangers donated organs so their loved ones could get kidneys from other donors in exchange.

"I thought to myself, 'Well, I could do that.' So, I called up the transplant coordinator and I said, 'You know, on "Grey's Anatomy" they did this exchange,' and she said, 'Oh, sure, we do that, too,' " Agrimson said. "So it was all through Facebook and 'Grey's Anatomy'."

The first kidney recipient in the chain was Shannon Peterson, a 50-year-old resident of Minot, N.D. Peterson's brother died from kidney failure in 2003, and his condition was so bad last summer that he "had pretty much given up," he said Tuesday.

Patients in kidney failure can live for a long time by receiving regular dialysis treatments, in which machines filter the blood and effectively do the work of the kidneys. But life on dialysis can be difficult.

Before the transplant, Peterson was dependent on a wheelchair and his weight had dropped from 170 pounds to 101. But Tuesday, he was up and walking and explaining how he has gained 30 pounds.

After presenting a bouquet of flowers to his kidney donor, Peterson said: "I wouldn't be alive without you."

Peterson received his kidney July 13 in a transplant at MeritCare Hospital in Fargo, N.D. Six days later, his sister Sheila Dalen donated her kidney at the same hospital and the organ was driven to the Twin Cities, where it kicked off the sequence of transplants.

"I would have only saved one life," Dalen said. "This way, we saved five lives."

Christopher Snowbeck can be reached at 651-228-5479.

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