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Dialysis Discussion => Dialysis: News Articles => Topic started by: okarol on September 26, 2008, 08:16:25 AM
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Woman in search of kidney donor
Heath resident keeps her humor despite illness
By L.B. WHYDE • Advocate Reporter • September 26, 2008
HEATH -- When Heath resident Leslie Ingersoll and her mother, Betty Chatigny, visiting from Florida, were walking around the Backwoods Fest recently, the subject of Ingersoll's need for a kidney transplant came up.
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Chatigny told her daughter to keep an eye out for a kidney; they might find one just lying around.
The women's sense of humor is what keeps Ingersoll going day after day while she is preparing to be placed on the kidney transplant list.
Ingersoll, 49, who graduated from Newark High School in 1977 and spent 14 years in the Marine Corps, is on dialysis three days per week.
She was diagnosed with autoimmune hepatitis, which is the body's immune system attacking the liver, in 2004. According to researchers, a genetic factor might make some people more susceptible to autoimmune disease. About 70 percent of those with autoimmune hepatitis are female.
While Ingersoll was dealing with the autoimmune hepatitis, she became ill with a urinary tract infection in January, and it blossomed into a blood infection, affecting the blood flow to the kidneys, which stopped working. Ingersoll went into a coma for a week, then spent the next seven weeks in a nursing home recovering.
She now needs a kidney and also might need a liver, depending on how soon she can get a kidney. The liver is the only regenerative organ in the body, and it could heal itself once she receives a new kidney.
"My life now revolves around dialysis," Ingersoll said. "I feel wiped out after dialysis, then it takes me a day to recover, then I have to go back again for dialysis. Usually I have one good day a week -- Sunday."
Lifeline of Ohio is a not-for-profit organ procurement organization that promotes and coordinates organ and tissue donation in central and southeastern Ohio. In 2007, about 28,300 Americans received a life-saving organ transplant and more than 1 million received a tissue transplant. According to the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients, 1,586 people received transplanted kidneys from deceased donors and 6,037 from living donors in 2007. At the start of last year, 70,162 were on the waiting list for a kidney, and by the end of 2007, 76,070 were waiting.
But Ingersoll might not have to wait on the transplant list if she can find local donor. All family members who were tested are unable to donate, so she now is appealing to the community.
The donor would incur no out-of-pocket expenses, and the body functions equally as well with one kidney as with two, she said.
"I am in renal failure now," Ingersoll said. "The sooner the transplant after renal failure, the better the chances are that my liver will be able to recover also."
Brenda Bobo, 48, of Newark, was in a similar situation earlier this year. She underwent a kidney transplant Aug. 15, is doing well and it has improved her life, she said.
Bobo was diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease, probably a genetic disorder, and for seven years continued to become weaker and weaker and was sick from the toxins in her blood.
"The cadaver list is running a five- to seven-year wait," Bobo said. "My doctors pretty much told me I needed a family member or friends to step up, because the list was too long for me to wait."
She appealed to her family members and her niece, Carrie Ford, 33, of Thornville, volunteered. Ford spent three days in the hospital and was a little tired, but now feels pretty normal. She was up and doing her normal routine in three weeks.
"My father went through dialysis and I watched him go through it," Ford said. "I would not wish that on anyone. Now this gives me a special connection with my aunt. At Christmas time, I'm going to be her favorite."
Again humor, which helps the body heal faster. But for Ingersoll, humor is all she has to cope as she waits for a kidney transplant. She hopes someone steps forward so she can carry on with her life.
"It's just been an odyssey of pain for her," Chatigny said. "She has put up with more than I ever could. She has never lost her sense of humor."
L.B. Whyde can be reached at (740) 328-8513 or lwhyde@newarkadvocate.com.
http://www.newarkadvocate.com/article/20080926/NEWS01/809260303/1002