Sister donating kidney to sibling suffering from renal failure for 26 yearsBy KARA L. RICHARDSON
Staff Writer
WATCHUNG -- Jim Trabilsy's survival during 26 years of renal failure has been dependent on his family.
His parents, Gloria and Albert Trabilsy, now 76 and 83 respectively, learned to give him dialysis treatments -- four hours a day, three days a week, 4,134 treatments to date -- at home.
Today, his 52-year-old sister, Carol Eichhorn, will give him one of her kidneys.
The brother and sister are a perfect donor match. However, Eichhorn has had to wait to help her 51-year-old brother, and his medical history has been complicated during the past quarter-century.
In addition to kidney failure, he's had kidney and prostate cancer, four thyroid surgeries and a procedure to drain fluid from around his heart.
While the average non-diabetic dialysis patient survives 12 years after the end stage diagnosis of renal disease, Jim Trabilsy has lasted 26.
"It's truly remarkable about what a person and a family can overcome. He's beaten a lot of odds," said Bill Reitsma, director of clinical services at the New Jersey Organ and Tissue Sharing Network.
His sister's kidney could work inside his body for 20 or more years, Reitsma said.
"That will free me off the machine so I can live my life like everyone else," Jim Trabilsy said.
It also will free his parents, who haven't been able to travel for a quarter century so they could give their son the life-sustaining treatments.
Jim Trabilsy was diagnosed with renal failure on the same week in 1981 that he started working as a lawyer at Wilentz, Goldman and Spitzer in Woodbridge.
His ankles were alarmingly swollen. After a series of tests, doctors learned he had a horseshoe kidney, meaning the two organs were attached with tissue. The kidneys should be independent organs.
Ever since, he's had to rely on dialysis -- a mechanical pumping process that rids the blood of toxins like kidneys would normally do. He started receiving dialysis treatments at the hospital and hated it, so he asked his parents if they'd be willing to learn how to do the procedure at home.
"It's hard sticking your own son," Gloria Trabilsy said, talking about the two two-inch needles she's had to thread into her son's arm three times a week.
Their willingness to learn the complicated procedure -- at any hour he needed the treatments -- has given him the flexibility to practice law.
He's a partner at Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer. He won the Middlesex County Bar Association's 2007 Municipal Practice Award in March.
On Monday, Albert Trabilsy checked his son's blood pressure and other gauges on the dialysis machine, marking a chart that must be sent to the insurance companies. In the foyer, there was a sample of his son's blood -- which had spun in the kitchen -- packed in dry ice and waiting for pickup.
There were boxes and boxes of medical records in a bedroom-turned-home-dialysis center. The home's basement is stocked with medical supplies, gauze, solutions and such.
"It's brought our family closer together," Jim Trabilsy said.
Kara L. Richardson can be reached at (908) 707-3186 or krichard@c-n.com.
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