My local newspaper, The Everett Herald, wanted people's Christmas Miracle stories. I replied to it (this was before my surgery) and the reporter called me a week or 2 after my surgery. I am one of four stories for this project.
Here is the link to it:
http://heraldnet.com/article/20111225/NEWS01/712259977#Tidings-of-joyHere is my part of the article:
A kidney named Lynette
Karen Solbeck's Christmas gift is nestled in her abdomen, just below her rib cage.
The dark red, bean-shaped organ is about the size of a fist.
For the next decade or perhaps longer, the Bothell woman has what she's wanted for a long time.
A life without hours-long dialysis sessions hooked up to machines. A life without fatigue. A life where she can eat lots of ice cream and use the toilet normally and travel on the spur of the moment.
In other words, life.
The first abnormal test showed up when Solbeck was 23. By age 26, she was watching the slow demise of her kidneys. Doctors don't know exactly what caused it.
"I remember thinking, 'Why me?'" said Solbeck, now 38. "When I was younger, I thought I was invincible. I was a healthy person."
Most people are born with two kidneys. The kidney's main job is to filter waste products and excess fluid from the blood.
Even though Solbeck's were failing, she noticed few symptoms until earlier this year when things got much worse.
Her kidney function had already dropped to 20 percent, the number that triggers placement on an organ donation list. At March, it was 13 percent. In April it was 8.
Soon she was on dialysis, scheduling her appointments around her full-time job with Frontier Communications in Everett.
Solbeck girded herself for what could be a long wait. Nearly 90,000 people in the U.S. are waiting for kidney transplants. Doctors told her it takes an average of three years for someone with her blood type to receive an organ. In some parts of the country, people wait up to a decade or longer.
One person couldn't get Solbeck's kidneys out of her mind.
"This plaguing thought -- it just wouldn't leave me," said Lynn Reid. "Karen needs a kidney."
Reid, who lives in Mukilteo, is a second cousin by marriage. Before this all began, they didn't know each other well.
Yet, Reid found herself getting her blood type tested. It was a match.
"I was intensely excited," Reid said. "There was no apprehension. No fear. No questioning. I was at peace."
More tests, more hurdles cleared. That surprised Reid because at 67 years old, she thought her kidney would be too old for a young woman.
Less than 2 percent of live donors are older than 65, according to the National Kidney Foundation.
The organ was just fine. In fact, when doctors carefully removed Reid's kidney the day of the donation, they said it looked healthy and strong, as if it had come from a newborn baby.
Reid believes her health was preserved because she was meant to give Solbeck the kidney.
A month after the surgery, both women are doing well. Solbeck has felt well enough to venture out shopping with her sister. Last week she strolled down the beach, absorbing the crisp winter sunshine, a ferry trundling across the sound, couples walking hand-and-hand. She felt at peace.
She calls her new kidney Lynette.
Doctors expect it should buy her about a decade of life without dialysis.
"I definitely feel responsibility," Solbeck said. "She went through all of this for me. … My response is to keep that gift working as long as I can."
For Reid, it seems the gift she's found is in giving.
"It's an honor to be able to do something," Reid said. "I call it her second life."
KarenInWA
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