Somerset woman needs kidney

Somerset woman needs kidney

By VICKI ROCK
Daily American Staff Writer
Thursday, December 20, 2007 12:31 AM EST

Donna Fix is hoping for a Christmas miracle: The 43-year-old Somerset woman needs a kidney transplant.

“I’m always optimistic,” she said. “People make fun of me because I’m always in a good mood. I’ve already had three transplants that have given me 20 years of life that I may not have had. A kidney could give me 20 more.”
Fix was a claims supervisor for Aetna U.S. Healthcare, but is currently on disability from that job. She works part time at Linda’s Dance Studio in Somerset as dance administrator. She lives with her mother, Joan Fix, who is retired.

Fix became a diabetic when she was 13. Then, in the late 1980s, she developed hypoglycemia unawareness. Normally, a person will feel warning symptoms when their blood sugar goes low, such as shaking and sweating caused by release of stress hormones. However, those with hypoglycemia unawareness have reduced warning signals and do not recognize they are low.

“I would pass out without warning,” she said. “I could no longer drive or hold a job.”

She had her first pancreas transplant in 1988 at the University of Minnesota Medical Center. She chose that facility because it had done the most pancreas transplants. She was able to go back to work and was well for five years. Then Fix suffered chronic rejection, which occurs when the immune system of a transplant recipient attacks the transplanted organ. She received her second pancreas transplant in 1996 and a third in June of 2000.

“The pancreas is still working fine,” Fix said. “It was from a 20-year-old donor and five of the six antigens matched. It was my best match.”

At the time, surgeons suggested that she also have a kidney transplant, but she was part of an HMO that insisted she go to a hospital other than the one in Minnesota. The surgeon there sent her back to Minnesota, where he had trained, and she underwent the pancreas transplant. She was under anesthetic when the approval came through for the kidney as well and couldn’t give her consent. So she only had the pancreas transplant.

Two weeks ago, she had a kidney infection, she said.

“It pushed me over the edge,” she said. “Now I’m in renal failure and must have a kidney transplant. If I don’t, I’ll have to go on dialysis. I’d be better off with a transplant than dialysis.”

Two people are willing to be tested as donors, but she could use more volunteers in case those two are not a match. Her mother and one brother are considered too old to be donors and another brother is overweight (a donor must have a body mass index of 30 or lower). Two teenagers who go to Linda’s Dance Studio offered to be donors, but one is under the legal age of 18 and the other was told by her mother that she only has one kidney herself.

Medicare will pay for the hospitalization, but not for Fix’s trip to Minnesota or her mother’s expenses to go with her. A medical fund has been established at PNC Bank. Checks must be made out to the Donna Fix Catastrophic Kidney Fund and sent to PNC Bank, 108 E. Main St., Somerset. Donation cans have been placed at Linda’s Dance Studio, The Medicine Shoppe and Tangles at Georgian Place. Linda’s is also chancing off a quilt. E.S. Printing in Somerset is donating the coupon books for the chances. A community night at Hoss’s Steak and Sea House is being planned.

“A cadaver donor could take five years,” Fix said. “If more people would check the donor box on their driver’s license, and tell their loved ones their wishes to donate, there would be more donors.”

(Vicki Rock can be reached at vickir@dailyamerican.com.)

http://www.dailyamerican.com/articles/2007/12/21/news/news616.txt