Family members rely on each other for critical kidney transplants

Posted on Mon, Jan. 03, 2011
Family members rely on each other for critical kidney transplants
By LISA GUTIERREZ
The Kansas City Star

When the Seetins of Kansas City, Kan., gather around the dining room table — Mom, Dad, two grown sons — they have eight kidneys among them.

They’re just not where you’d expect them to be.

Oldest son Scott has three kidneys. So does his mother.

Scott’s brother has one kidney. So does his father.

Over the last two years the Seetins have made a medical journey that has brought them to where they are now: healthy and alive.

For that, they are grateful in this new year. So as you read this they are enjoying themselves in California (despite the cold rain) “to kind of celebrate the second chance at life we’ve had,” says Scott, 30, a graphic designer.

They went to watch Scott ride on the Donate Life float in the venerable Tournament of Roses Parade on Saturday, sharing a spotlight with other organ recipients and donors.

Scott intended to be a living donor, too, until a twist of fate wound up saving his own life.

More than 108,000 people across the country are waiting for a life-saving organ transplant right now. More than 2,000 of those people live in Kansas and Missouri.

“The numbers speak for themselves,” says Erin Gregory, spokeswoman for the Midwest Transplant Network in Westwood.

Sandy Seetin, Scott’s 53-year-old mother, could have been one of those waiting. The Seetins’ story begins with Sandy, who works part time in a floral shop. She learned about five years ago that her kidneys were failing.

She began dialysis in 2007, and it did not go well.

“I knew I couldn’t stay on dialysis the rest of my life,” she says.

Watching their mother struggle, Scott and his brother volunteered to donate the kidney she needed. Though he would have liked to, Sandy’s husband, Dennis, couldn’t help because he has his own kidney issues.

Dennis, 55, who works for Philips Medical Systems, learned about 15 years ago that one of his kidneys had never fully developed and had stopped functioning. He had it removed.

So in the spring of 2008, the Seetin brothers started down the donor path. After weeks of countless blood draws and tests, Scott and Kyle, 26, a mapper/drafter for Kansas City Board of Public Utilities, were both pronounced matches for their mother.

For reasons still unknown to the family, the transplant team tapped Scott for the surgery.

“It was kind of bittersweet that they did because that’s how he found out,” Sandy says. “If they had just taken Kyle, then…”

In May 2008, Scott was sitting in a doctor’s office waiting to clear a final hurdle before the transplant. When the doctor walked into the room, “he just had this look on his face like ‘I have something bad to tell you but I don’t know how to tell you,’ ” Scott remembers.

You can’t donate, the doctor told Scott. You need a kidney as badly as your mom.

Scott couldn’t believe what the doctor said next — that his own kidneys were functioning at only 18 percent.

There’d been no signs. Well, maybe his ankles did swell and ache, and he got overly tired sometimes.

“It’s kind of a silent killer,” he says. “The kidneys deplete at such a gradual pace. It could have been happening for years, and I never really knew.

“I was pretty upset, but I think I was more upset at the fact that I wasn’t able to help my mom. She gave me life, and I was ready to repay the favor.

“I didn’t know how I was going to tell Mom that not only is she losing a donor but a son to the same disease that she was fighting so hard to beat.”

Just as Scott could read his doctor’s face, his mom could tell by his that all was not right when he walked in the front door of the family home a few hours later.

When Scott told her that he couldn’t donate his kidney after all, she said, “Well, that’s fine. I’m glad you offered, and I still have Kyle. And (Scott) said, ‘I have to have a kidney, too.’

“That was pretty shocking. I don’t think I heard what he said at first.”

She insisted that Kyle’s kidney now go to Scott.

Back at square one, Sandy’s younger brother and sister, who had both earlier offered to be donors, began the cross-matching process.

Sandy’s sister, who lives in Florida, was scheduled for the transplant, but two weeks before, doctors found plaque in the kidney’s arteries.

Once again, Sandy lost her donor. Eventually her brother, Don White, a KCK firefighter, was cleared to donate, and on Nov. 13, 2008, they underwent their surgeries.

The brothers came next. In yet another wrinkle, the week before their transplant operations in October 2009, an anesthesiologist noticed an irregularity on Kyle’s EKG.

He was quickly green-lighted, though, and Kyle “saved my life,” says Scott, who, like his mother, now has three kidneys in his body — standard practice when kidneys aren’t infected or cancerous.

Scott and his mother got their second chances, and Scott isn’t about to waste his.

He met Mandi Clifton, a North Kansas City schoolteacher, about a month before his transplant. On their first date he told her that he had some “medical problems.”

She stuck with him through the transplant and his recovery, and before they left for California last week, he proposed to her. She said yes.

“No matter how hard life punches you or puts you down, no matter how many curveballs or doors they slam in front of you, never give up,” Scott says. “Stay positive. The negative light shines very bright, but if you stay positive it’ll get you through that.”

HOW TO DONATE

You can register to become an organ, eye and tissue donor at www.donatelife missouri.com or the new www.donatelifekansas.com.

If you signed the back of your driver’s license or registered before August 2008 in Missouri or July 2010 in Kansas, your legal next of kin can still override your wishes. The new registries create a first-person authorization that is legally binding and does not require family consent for a donation.

For more information, visit the Midwest Transplant Network website, www.mwtn.org.

BY THE NUMBERS

•Every 13 minutes another name is added to the national organ transplant waiting list.

•On average, 18 people die every day because they don’t get an organ they need for a transplant.

•In 2008 (the most recent year statistics are available), there were 7,984 deceased organ donors and 6,218 living organ donors, resulting in 27,961 organ transplants.

•One donor can save or enhance the lives of more than 50 people.
To reach Lisa Gutierrez, call 816-234-4987 or send e-mail to lgutierrez@kcstar.com.

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