Transplant recipient feels ‘like a new man’

Transplant recipient feels ‘like a new man’

By Aaron Blevins | Reporter-Times correspondent

Sunday November 11, 2007

MARTINSVILLE — The costs and complications of dialysis treatments are over for a Martinsville man who recently underwent an organ transplant to relieve his failing kidneys.

After seven months on a transplant waiting list, Bruce Hacker, 60, obtained his new kidney at Jewish Hospital in Louisville on Oct. 7.

A month later, Hacker said he is feeling great. He said he is capable of eating some of his favorite foods again and could take a vacation if the notion struck him. “It feels wonderful,” he said. “I feel like a new man. I don’t have to go to dialysis anymore. Now I can go any place I want to go.”

The transplant occurred at a convenient time for Hacker, who had been having trouble funding round-trips three days a week to Danville for his life-sustaining dialysis treatments. However, after an article in the Sept. 30 Sunday Reporter-Times, Hacker said he received numerous phone calls from people offering gas money and prayers. Roughly a week later, he received his transplant.

“I think the prayers did the trick,” he said. “I’d like to thank the people for praying for me.”

Hacker does not yet know whose kidney he received. He said the person was deceased and that he will find out the identity of the individual eventually, but after the family is allowed time to mourn.

In the meantime, he is continuing to adjust to life without hours of dialysis treatments every week. A retired carpenter, Hacker said he was always active and that it killed him to sit three or four hours during the treatments and wait.

His wife, Joyce, said she is enjoying the lifted burden as well, because the couple is not required to travel so often for her husband’s treatments.

“It’s just saved a lot of travel and gas,” she said. The transplant “just helped a lot. He didn’t like (the dialysis treatments) at all. And if he feels better, I feel better.”

Hacker said he needed very little recovery time after the transplant and that the hospital handled his operation well.

“My surgeon down there was wonderful,” he said. “I didn’t feel any pain. I’m not on any pain pills. She did a heck of a job.”

Despite his successful transplant, Hacker still needs assistance taking his medications and is considered legally blind.

Plus, he still must follow diet restrictions he knows all too well.

He is still on a low-sodium, low-potassium diet, and has been for eight years.

After his kidney transplant, he can “cheat” with foods like tomatoes and bread-and-butter pickles — just as long as it is in moderation.

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