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Dialysis Discussion => Dialysis: News Articles => Topic started by: okarol on November 01, 2009, 09:43:31 PM
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Woman donates kidney to stranger so stepfather can get transplant
Trend in paired organ donations offer new twist on transplants and way to whittle down waiting lists.
By Mary Ann Roser
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, November 02, 2009
When Lessa Ennis of Austin learned her stepfather in Colorado Springs needed a kidney, she offered one of hers. But she wasn't a match — nor were other healthy members of Jay Weenig's immediate family.
But Ennis, 49, was still able to help Weenig, 74, get a new kidney on Aug. 25. She donated a kidney to a man in Georgia, and the man's wife in turn donated a kidney to Weenig.
It's called a paired donation — a new twist on organ donation that is becoming more common as the waiting list for kidneys swells.
Last year, 16,520 kidney transplants were performed in the United States, and 36 percent involved live donors, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, the national organization that matches and distributes organs. Still, nearly 105,000 Americans are waiting for organ transplants, and 78.6 percent need a kidney.
"It was very easy for me. I didn't hesitate," Ennis said of her decision to donate to her stepfather, who had been on dialysis since 2006 after his kidneys failed. "We all feel helpless when a loved one is ill, but this is a way to help and actually do something about it."
Weenig had been on the list for a kidney transplant in Colorado and Arizona, where he splits his time. When no family member matched, the transplant center at the University of Colorado Hospital in Denver told him about the Ohio-based Alliance for Paired Donation. Its database matches donors and recipients who are strangers but agree to provide the other's loved one with a kidney from a friend, relative or altruistic stranger. The surgeries are done simultaneously, often in different cities, so no one can back out.
So far, the 3-year-old alliance has orchestrated 41 paired donations, said Laurie Reece, the executive director and an Austin resident. She said there are about five or six organizations like hers in the United States, and the oldest one in the world is in the Netherlands, established in about 2000. The longest chain of paired donations in the U.S. involved 10 recipients and 10 donors — 20 people who had to have coordinated surgeries, Reece said.
Transplant centers have been slower than she expected to embrace the concept, Reece said, and of 243 in the country, the alliance has signed up 83.
Some hospitals consider the federal patient privacy law to be a barrier because of concerns about entering patient information into a database, Reece said. She said their database is secure and encrypted.
Ennis signed up a year ago. In January, she was going to be part of chain in which nine people would get kidneys, but the three-person link she was in fell through because a donor had high blood pressure, kidney stones and a cyst on her kidney, Ennis said. In May, she was called again, but it didn't get very far before it was called off, Ennis said.
"It could have been a lot of things. They can fall through the day before surgery," said Ennis, a married mother of two grown daughters. "It's very stressful."
She said some of her family and friends didn't want her to donate because they were worried about something going wrong, but she reassured them with research she found about the procedure's safety. In August, she was matched with Lee Kingery in Pulaski, Ga. Kingery's wife, Gretchen, was a match for Weenig. Ennis would fly to Georgia for the surgery, and while she was having her kidney removed at the Medical College of Georgia Health Medical Center in Augusta, Gretchen Kingery would undergo surgery in Denver with Weenig. It would be the first paired donation for the Georgia hospital.
"It is asking for a leap of faith to say, 'I'm going to fly somewhere else ... to donate a kidney to people I've only just met," said Dr. Todd Merchen, an assistant professor of surgery at the Medical College of Georgia. Ennis "was very anxious when she got here, and she was afraid things were going to fall through again."
But she was a determined donor and "about the most magnanimous as a person can be," Merchen said.
Merchen's parents-in-law, Steve and Pat Donohue of North Augusta, had agreed to be liaisons to the paired donation program at the Georgia hospital, and they met Ennis at the airport, showed her around and invited her to their home for meals and other visits.
Ennis said she was "treated like royalty," not only by the Donohues and Kingerys but by people she met casually. One family took her on a drive so she could indulge a hankering for Georgia's famous peaches.
On the day of the surgery, Ennis said she felt no anxiety. "The Bible says, 'He will give you peace that surpasses understanding.' I had hundreds of people praying for me."
The hospital was meticulous in preparing her, she said. It made sure she knew some donors faced complications. It also told her having one kidney could put her at risk for insurance coverage in the future — a risk she said she was prepared to take.
After the surgery, Ennis said, it was painful to get out of bed for about a week, and she was nauseated until last week. "I feel great now," she said.
All of her transplant-related medical bills have been covered by Weenig's insurance, and most of her travel expenses were picked up by a Georgia foundation, she said.
Her stepfather was hospitalized recently for rejecting his new kidney, and he's receiving medication to try to stop it. His wife, Nancy Weenig, said the family is hopeful.
Ennis said it won't be easy if the rejection continues, but "it's a comfort that Lee (Kingery) is doing well."
"I'd do it again in a minute," she said, and then she listed some of the reasons: the new friends she made and her new role as a volunteer with the alliance, which enables her to promote paired donation. "I got so much from this."
maroser@statesman.com; 445-3619
http://www.statesman.com/services/content/news/stories/local/2009/11/02/1102kidneyswap.html?cxtype=ynews_rss