Kidney donor’s story worth passing along ... once more

[okarol]

Kidney donor’s story worth passing along ... once more

By Denise Crosby dcrosby@stmedianetwork.com Nov 2, 2010 11:00AM

There’s a lot of questions Diane Szot can’t answer.

She doesn’t know why, for example, she saved a 4-year-old newspaper article about a fellow Oswego resident donating his kidney to a stranger.

Nor is she sure why her 15-year-old son died in the middle of the night a couple years later.

And, if you ask Szot why she’s going to donate one of her kidneys to the husband of a co-worker in a couple of weeks, she doesn’t have a sure-fire answer for that, either.

The best she can come up with on that last one? “God prompted me,” she shrugs. “Besides, I’ve made it through 50 years of my life with two kidneys, so I can probably get through the rest of it with just one.”

Charles Fleming still shakes his head in wonder when he hears Szot explain this selfless act. The 47-year-old former Army Reserve sergeant, now working maintenance for the Aurora Housing Authority, has been struggling with kidney disease since his early 30s. Now in renal failure these past two years, the Aurora father of two young daughters depends on dialysis three times a week to stay alive.

Szot, a mother of four and dental hygienist who works with Fleming’s wife Stacy in Dr. Joseph Michael’s Aurora office, was aware of his health problems. But she had plenty of other issues on her mind. Her oldest son had battled muscular dystrophy since age 5. Yet even in a wheelchair, Cory, a straight-A student at Oswego East High School, was as active and involved as ever. He even planned on being in a Special Olympics wheelchair race on the day he died.

“I guess I was just so caught up in my grief,” said Szot, “I put everything else aside.”

Just like that newspaper story.

Then, at some point this spring, a casual comment from Stacy Fleming about her husband’s many hours of dialysis made Szot realize how serious things had become.

About that time, she pulled out the old article. “If one person reading my story decides to do it, then it’s worth it,” Brad Phillips — a father of three who donated his kidney to a Westmont man — was quoted in the story.

Szot insists God did the rest. If the Lord wants me to do this, then I’ll pass all the (donor) tests, she told herself.

The match was not perfect, but good enough — much like the support from her family. And Szot insists she’s like a kid waiting for Christmas as she counts the days until Nov. 19, when she and Fleming will undergo surgery at Rush-Presbyterian St. Luke’s Hospital in Chicago.

Only don’t call her a hero. Don’t call her brave. Or strong. Or selfless.

If anything, call her a survivor.

“I endured the death of a child,” Szot said. “Giving a kidney is easier.”

http://beaconnews.suntimes.com/news/2164026-418/szot-kidney-fleming-aurora-call.html