Transplant patient faces another test

Transplant patient faces another test
Six years later, Ferreira will require new kidney

By Jackie MacMullan, Globe Staff | July 17, 2007

Michael Ferreira was given the precious gift of life not once, but twice from his mother, Dawn Frasca, who donated a kidney to her son June 19, 2001. Ferreira, who was a teenager at the time and suffered from a disease that shrank his kidneys, not only recovered but went on to star on the Nantucket basketball team and became an inspiration to transplant victims throughout the country.

It was a heart-warming story that deserved a happy ending, but six years later Ferreira's immune system has rejected the kidney, and he lies in Massachusetts General Hospital this morning undergoing dialysis treatment and awaiting another transplant.

"I'm doing OK," Ferreira said. "I guess I wasn't planning on this."

According to his father, Tom Ferreira, Michael was supposed to undergo routine check-ups, but missed one of his appointments over the winter. He was on a regimen that required him to take 15 pills a day, and when Tom went off island to pick up his son's medication in Boston, the nurse told him she couldn't give him the medication until his son came in for his check-up.

"Thankfully, she told us to get Michael in there," said Tom. "If not, we would have had no idea how bad things truly were."

When Michael had routine blood work done last week, his creatinine level, which is an indicator of his renal function, had skyrocketed to 12. When his kidney was functioning normally, his levels wavered between 2.3 and 2.6. The alarmed medical staff immediately admitted Ferreira, and he has been at Mass. General ever since.

"He was really, really sick, but he never said anything," said his father. "I guess he's used to not feeling well. With the levels he had, the doctors said he shouldn't have been able to drag himself out of bed.

"But right up until they admitted him, he was working out with the Cape Cod Frenzy of the [American Basketball League]. It's a mystery to them how he was able to do that."

Michael and his family were aware when his mother donated her kidney that rejection was a possibility. Although Ferreira has tried to live a normal life, including enrolling at UMass-Boston, where he was hoping to play ball next fall, his condition was always in the back of his mind.

"You never totally stop thinking about it," his father acknowledged. "Every person who has had a transplant experiences some rejection at some point. But we have a relative who had a kidney transplant that's had the same kidney for 17 years. You hope for something like that.

"We just have to believe the next one will work for him."

Ferreira will spend the next couple of months trying to lower his creatinine level (it was down to 10 last Friday) before he will attempt to undergo another transplant operation. His family is hopeful someone will come forward to donate a kidney. The Nantucket community has been incredibly supportive, Tom Ferreira said, but the more donors they have to choose from, the better chance they have of finding an optimal match.

The biggest challenge at the moment is keeping up the spirits of Michael, who is 21 years old and weary of hospitals.

"He's understandably down," Tom Ferreira said. "He just feels like he doesn't want to do this all over again."

Anyone interested in helping the Ferreira family locate a donor can e-mail Tom Ferreira at nantucketbball@hotmail.com.