After 30 years, shared kidney, shared life

After 30 years, shared kidney, shared life
12:34 AM, Dec. 20, 2011 | Comments

Written by Mark Hare

An organ donor's gift of life celebrated by family, friends

"Dialysis was killing me," says John Trippe. "It just wasn't working and I had such cramps that afterward I would walk home, kind of as a protest, but because I wanted to walk off the cramps."

That was 1980. Trippe was 26. As a 5-year-old he had a strep infection that led to kidney disease. His kidneys began to fail when he was 25, and he was soon receiving dialysis four times a week for several hours at a time.

Kidney transplants were not unusual then, but they were less common and more complicated and risky than they are now. Trippe's five siblings were tested to see whether any would be a good match as a donor. The best match was his younger brother Jerry, then just 16.

The doctors were reluctant at first to let Jerry donate to John, but after a battery of physical and psychological tests, he received the go-ahead.

Jerry, now 47, is an electronic technician for the City School District and lives in Brighton. He did not then and does not now think of himself as a hero. He did what seemed right and logical. He had an extra kidney and he gave it to John. Right around Thanksgiving, in November 1981, the brothers were rolled into surgery.

When he awoke, Jerry says, the pain was the worst he'd ever experienced. He was unable to walk without help for two weeks and he missed two months of school.

Live donors were less common in 1981, says Dr. Mark Orloff, director of transplants at the University of Rochester Medical Center. UR averages around 70 kidney transplants annually, he says, and about half are from living donors.

The procedure is much safer today, Orloff says, because the surgery is laparoscopic, using a very small incision. The hospital stay is very short; the procedure less invasive. Years ago, an incision across the flank would require cutting through stomach muscles that would then take months to heal. Today, donors and recipients can get back to work quickly. And finding the perfect or near perfect genetic match is no longer a major concern, Orloff says, because the immune suppression drugs available today are safer and more effective.

Before his kidneys failed, John was a pre-med student. The transplant and recovery forced him to quit school and he later became a funeral director — a choice he says allows him to assist people in times of great distress.

"I've tried to respect the gift," he says, referring not just to the transplant but to what it has taught both him and Jerry.

"I've never regretted it," Jerry says. "It taught me that there are times when what we do makes a real difference."

In 30 years, the Trippes never had a health problem related to the transplant — another side to the gift.

In all those years the science of organ transplantation has made the gift-giving simple and safer, Orloff says. And yet, so many of us have never signed that organ donor card. New York, he says, is 48th out of 50 states in residents who sign the card.

I don't get it. I know people have their reasons, but I also know how important it is, and how many lives could be extended. Please get some information on organ donation. Talk to your family. And sign that card.

(For information on becoming a registered potential organ donor, visit donorrecovery.org).

Mark Hare's column appears on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. He can be reached at (585) 258-2351.

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/article/20111220/NEWS0201/112200323/Mark-Hare-organ-donor