33-year-old recipient meets mother of the young man whose kidney saved her life

[okarol]

Ceremony honors shared lives
    33-year-old recipient meets mother of the young man whose kidney saved her life

By Rachel Cohen

MEDIANEWS STAFF
04/29/2007

HAYWARD -- It has been 10 months and 23 days since Nicholas Ermak, 22, fell to his death while rock climbing, and since Dahlia Brown, who turns 33 on Tuesday, has lived free of dialysis, thanks to the kidney she received from Ermak.

Four days after her transplant, Brown wrote a letter to Ermak's family saying thank you, which the California Transplant Donor Network delivered anonymously under privacy laws. A couple of months ago Ermak's mother, Tricia Leonard, responded, and on Saturday, she and Brown met for the first time.

"I'm so excited about this meeting and everything he's saved," Brown told Leonard. "And that's what I think of it as -- he saved my life."

More than 1,100 people attended the celebration and remembrance ceremony Saturday at Chabot College to honor the families of 280 people who said yes to donation when their loved ones passed away last year. The Donate to Life campaign said that the need for donors is especially strong within Latino, Asian/Pacific Islander and African-American communities, with nearly two-thirds of the 20,000 Californians on the waiting list for transplants belonging to these communities.

An easy way to sign up to be an organ donor is through the Department of Motor Vehicles when applying for or renewing a driver's license or ID card. The Transplant Network encourages people to talk with their families so they know your wishes.

Brown had been waiting eight years for a kidney since her first transplant from her mother failed three years after she received it. Her kidneys had first turned against her when she was diagnosed with lupus at age 19. She had been going to dialysis 31/2 hours a day, three days a week.

After working all day, she was at home with her husband of nine years, Ron, making dinner when she got the phone call telling her to come to the hospital because a perfect match had been found.

By 10 a.m. the next morning she had a new kidney. Four days later she was out of the hospital.

"I can be spontaneous now," Brown said. "I don't have to plan months in advance."

Brown, who could not get pregnant while on dialysis, is counting down the months to when her doctors say it is safe.

"This is my chance to start a family," she said.

Two months ago, Ermak's mother responded anonymously to Brown's letter through the Transplant Network, when she knew that she could respond cheerfully.

"I was waiting for this day to come since I received your letter," Brown told Leonard in person Saturday, as Leonard listened with teary eyes. Leonard said that her family thought that her son would have wanted his organs donated.

"He was very self-effacing," she said of Ermak, who was known for his blue mohawk when he entered UC Santa Cruz. "He lived a simple life and was extremely healthy."

He studied computer science and Asian studies, which inspired a passion for martial arts, in which he became proficient, performed before the "Grand Master" in Japan and was awarded a black belt, stepfather Fred Leonard said.

The day Ermak took a break to go rock climbing in Mt. Diablo State Park he had just finished helping his best friend's mother, who was disabled, move into an assisted living community because her husband had suddenly died, Tricia Leonard said.

"Why not give back what you can?" said Tricia Leonard, a middle school vice principal in Pleasanton. "He had a clean background so we donated everything."

She added that her family will never know who got all the parts of his body, including the skin from his back for burn victims, and his eyes.

ORGAN DONATION

One person can save as many as eight lives as an organ donor and improve more than 50 other lives through eye and tissue donation. In 2006, more than 6,000 people died while on the U.S. organ-transplant waiting list because the organs they needed were not donated in time, according to the California Transplant Donor Network. For more information, contact the Transplant Network at 888-570-9400 or http://www.ctdn.org.

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