Transplanting hope for life

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October 18, 2010
Transplanting hope for life

By BETTY RIDGE Special Writer The Tahlequah Daily Press Mon Oct 18, 2010, 09:50 AM CDT

TAHLEQUAH — Two years ago, Jim Hamby debated whether it was worth the effort to keep living.

Today, he greets each morning with optimism.

A kidney-pancreas transplant made all the difference in Hamby’s life. The symptoms of his Type 1 diabetes have disappeared. After several brushes with death, he’s enrolled in a vocational rehab program and hopes to become employed again. He also is ready to tell his story, a story of the optimism transplants can bring and the importance of becoming an organ donor.

On Saturday, he was scheduled to meet, for the first time, the mother of the 20-year-old accident victim whose organs gave him a new chance at life.

Hamby, 46, lives in the Welling area and grew up in Cherokee County. After attending Tahlequah High School, he worked at several jobs, married, divorced, then moved to Florida for a time. There, he traveled with his mother, who operated concessions trailers at state fairs and carnivals.

In February 1987, at age 22, he learned he had Type 1 diabetes.

“I didn’t just go for a test. I got severely ill. I went to the doctor and was told I had a severe ear infection. I went home and took the medicine, but didn’t get better,” he said. “Two days later, I was praying to God to actually stop the pain. I was in ketoacidosis.”

That condition occurs when the body cannot function normally because it lacks insulin, and tries to burn fat instead to produce energy.

He was rushed to the hospital, learned he was a Type 1 diabetic, and began insulin injections immediately. And Hamby learned the routine diabetics become familiar with – checking blood glucose regularly, taking insulin shots, watching his diet.

“I was actually doing real well, going by the book I’d say, for three years,” he said.

Back in Oklahoma he married again, became the father of two children, and worked long hours as a dairy delivery man. He struggled with controlling his diabetes while spending 14 to 16 hours a day on his milk route. Then, one day, he went into ketoacidosis again.

“I parked my milk truck right in the lot at Tahlequah City Hospital and admitted myself into the emergency room. They put me in the intensive care unit,” he said.

He lost his milk route job after another diabetes-related incident. He was not working, and was driving down the Muskogee Turnpike, when he went into insulin shock because of low blood sugar.

“I pulled over to the side of the road. I had some food and I started feeding myself. In the process I passed out, woke up in jail with blood and bruises all over me,” he said

Although his driver’s license stated that he was diabetic and should have food available when driving, he was charged with DUI. His boss helped him get out of jail, but he was unable to keep the job.

“That’s part of the world we live in. People are uneducated about this horrible disease,” he said.

He then got a job for Zapata Industries in Muskogee, but diabetes once again caused him to lose it, after seven years. Ketoacidosis struck him again while at home alone in his apartment. For three days he lay there, unable to move because of the severe pain.

“Some people from the office came to my house and kicked my door in, because they knew something was going on,” Hamby said. “There I lay, still breathing. They took me to the hospital.”

When he went back to work, he found he was being terminated because the labor contract had a clause that if there were three “no contact, no show” days, the employee would be fired.

On Thanksgiving day of 1999, he called his father and asked to move back to Welling. After some time, he decided to file for disability.

“My illness was getting worse. The complications were actually setting in within my body,” he said. “I was suffering and I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t asking for a handout, I was asking for help.”

Then, his father developed prostate cancer and Hamby devoted much of his time to helping him recover.

Among the many complications diabetics can develop are eye and kidney problems. Some eventually suffer from blindness and kidney failure.

In October 2004, Hamby and his father were burning a brush pile.

“All of a sudden I started having retinal hemorrhages in one of my eyes,” he said. “You talk about having a really weird feeling.”

He described it as being like having a black marker making lines across his eyes and blocking his vision. This continued for the next two years in both eyes, but not at the same time. When the hemorrhages stopped, the blood would dry up and disappear and he would get his vision back after about three months.

“In October 2006, both eyes began to hemorrhage, worse than ever, at the same time. I went completely black. I could see light through the peripheries but I could not look straight ahead. I was blind,” he said. “At the time, I was really, really sick, but functioning.”

He had to give up driving. His brother, Lance, took him to Social Security again to seek help. Hamby said Lance has been instrumental in taking him to all his appointments and getting him the help he needed.

“I had determined, with the way I felt, I either had congestive heart failure or kidney failure,” he said. “I told them I didn’t know what to do, I don’t have insurance, I don’t have enough money to do anything, but I really believe my kidneys have failed.

“They told me to go to the emergency room and ‘if you need dialysis, we have insurance that will cover that.’”

By January 2007, the situation had deteriorated and Hamby sought help at the TCH emergency room.

“They told me, ‘All we can do is get you on your feet and you need to see your primary physician,’” he said. “I told them please, I need help, I don’t think my kidneys are functioning any more. I went home and had literally given up. I had seen a few doctors and they just kept sending me home.”

Then Dr. James Madison began his nephrology practice in Tahlequah.

On Sept. 18, 2007, Hamby went to his doctor and was in such bad shape they sent him to the emergency room. There, he learned he had lost a lot of blood and was placed in the ICU for a transfusion.

“While I was getting my blood transfused, Dr. Madison walked in. I had never seen him before,” Hamby said. “He started explaining to me, in that wonderful way he has of communicating. He confirmed to me what I had known for over a year, that I had kidney failure.

“He said, ‘Don’t worry about the money. All I want to do is get you better. To me, it was like, ‘Thank you, Lord.’ I couldn’t believe it. I was so grateful I was finally able to get the help.”

Madison arranged for him to get the surgery necessary to insert the fistula, used for the dialysis. He made arrangements with DaVita Dialysis for Hamby to receive treatment there. Hamby began going in for four-hour treatments three-times weekly. Madison monitored him closely.

“Jim was the first patient I had to enroll in the dialysis unit when I got into town,” Madison said, adding that the two have developed a close relationship and bond.

“A lot of the barrier for many people is the fear of the unknown, when you’re told your kidneys are in failure. They began equating it to the end of their life,” Madison said. “I try to instill in my patients that we’re going to give them as much quality time as they can get.”

Hamby began feeling better. His vision began to clear up. He was happy with his progress on dialysis. But after about three months, Madison suggested the possibility of a kidney-pancreas transplant at the Nazih Zuhdi Transplant Institute, at Integris Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City.

At first Hamby was reluctant to consider the option. He had talked with several fellow dialysis patients who had received kidneys, and whose transplants had failed. One had lasted three years, although one older man had functioned well with a transplanted kidney for 26 years.

Madison let him think about it, then asked him again.

“He said, ‘What if it does just last three years? That’s a long time for somebody in the shape you’re in,’” Hamby said. He was told his life expectancy would be about 10 years without the transplant.

He decided to go ahead. Lance took him to Oklahoma City for testing, and he was placed on the transplant list in May 2008.

“You’ve got to be really dedicated to go through all this, and you’ve got to have the resources,” Hamby said.

Lance, Madison, and the staff at Nazih Zuhdi (he especially credits transplant coordinator Belinda Bell, social worker Gayla Wilson, Dr. Jose El-Amm and Dr. Vivek Kohli) for giving him the support he needed through the process.

A year passed. In May 2009 he returned to Nazih Zuhdi Institute for a checkup to make sure he was still a candidate for transplant. In the next months he had two false alarms – Lance took him to Oklahoma City, only for them to find the transplant couldn’t take place because the pancreas wasn’t suitable.

“Three months later – on Aug. 3, 2009 – I received the gift of life,” Hamby said. “I was sitting in my recliner on a Sunday evening. We were waiting to go to church.”

Fearing another false alarm, their drive was slower. But they arrived in Oklahoma City that night, and Hamby received the transplant the next day. There were complications with bleeding, so his recovery was not as quick as expected.

“They fixed me. They did not give up,” Hamby said. “I love those people. I would do anything for them. Dr. Kohli was my guardian angel. To me these are the finest surgeons in the world. They cared for me when my life was threatened. They kept me from dying. They’ve been with me ever since.”

He was released from the hospital Aug. 18, but stayed in the same building, as part of a hotel where post-operative patients receive care. He saw the doctor every other day and received wound care. Finally he came home Sept. 29.

Before the transplant, “I was really ready to die. I was praying that the Lord would either make me better or take me home,” he said. “Since then, I get excited when I wake up in the morning because I know all I’m doing is preparing for something good that is going to happen in my life.

“I haven’t taken a shot of insulin since I went in to get my transplant. I no longer have the problems associated with Type 1 diabetes. I can eat what I want, I don’t have to be on a renal diet. It’s amazing.”

He does check his blood sugar fairly regularly, although his doctors have told him he doesn’t need to.

Madison is pleased with Hamby’s success, and wants to help other patients enjoy similar success stories. For those who need transplants, the process has become easier.

TCH recently was designated a satellite for the Nazih Zuhdi Transplant Institute. Patients needing kidney transplants, heart transplants, or other transplants can receive, evaluations, the bulk of their testing and pre-transplant care locally.

Madison said patients need make only one trip to Oklahoma City, until the day they get the call that an organ is ready for them.

The Cherokee Nation has also cooperated by keeping more of the drugs needed by transplant patients in stock.

He said transplant is the best option for people with conditions such as Hamby, if the patient is healthy enough to undergo the procedure. But there is still a severe shortage of donor organs.

He encourages people to consider becoming organ donors and discussing this with their families.

“You only see such stories as Jim’s when people are generous enough to give organs,” he said.

Meanwhile, Hamby has been corresponding, via the Internet, with the mother of the man who gave him a new start in life. The 20-year-old, from Dallas, was a student at Oklahoma State University. After a head injury, he was declared brain dead and his family was willing to donate his organs to save others.

He was looking forward to an emotional meeting with her and telling her about the quality of life he enjoys now, because of her son’s gift.

“I feel pretty confident that I’m going to be able to go to work pretty soon and start living a normal life again,” he said.

“None of this would have been possible if God hadn’t been in control and placed all these people in my life.”

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