Strangers line up to donate kidney to Sunnyside girl

[okarol]

Published on Sunday, June 08, 2008

Strangers line up to donate kidney to Sunnyside girl
More and more, people are donating kidneys anonymously to people like 9-year-old Laynee Schneider, a Sunnyside girl on dialysis because her kidneys won't grow. Says Laynee: 'I think they're nice.'

by Ross Courtney
Yakima Herald-Republic

SUNNYSIDE -- People may not know Laynee Schneider, but they are lining up to give her one of their kidneys.

If they don't have the same blood type, they are staying lined up to donate a kidney to someone else they don't know.

"I think they're nice," says Laynee, a 9-year-old Sunnyside girl who spends 12 hours a night on dialysis while she waits for a suitable donor. "I haven't met them, but I still think they're nice and kind."

Traditionally, transplanted kidneys have come from family members or friends. But some people donate anonymously, just because someone somewhere needs one. Such donations, called altruistic or non-directed, are increasing nationwide as medical advances make surgeries safer and immunosuppressants more efficient.

In 1988, there was only one anonymous kidney transplant in the country, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing. Last year, there were 97, including six in Washington.

Laynee, born with kidneys that don't grow, could get a transplant from somebody she doesn't even know.

After news reports detailed her plight last month, 21 people requested organ donor paperwork. Three are relatives, four or five are family friends. Federal privacy laws make it impossible to identify the rest.

"There has been quite a response," says Emily Golladay, Laynee's mother. "I don't know a lot of these people."

 

All the goodwill may help others, too. One would-be donor doesn't match Laynee's blood type, but is undergoing screening anyway to donate to whoever is next on the waiting list, says Eric Bass, coordinator of the University of Washington Medical Center Living Donor Program.

"Some people have something inside them that says, 'I really need to do this,'" Bass says.

The anonymous donor declined interview requests delivered by Bass, who is bound by federal law to keep identities confidential unless both recipient and donor say otherwise.

To capitalize on altruistic donors, scientists have been developing algorithms to sort and match donors with recipients, while Johns Hopkins surgeons have been performing multiple kidney exchanges they call "domino" transplants. In April, they performed a six-way surgery between 12 people, according to the medical periodical Science Daily. One non-directed donor made it possible for five patients, each with their own willing but nonmatching donor, to receive a new kidney. The sixth kidney went to the next match on a waiting list.

There are advantages to both related and anonymous donations.

Family members usually match better. The body tends to regard donated organs as diseases and reject them. Doctors try to overcome this by en-
suring donor and recipient have similar blood types,
antibodies and tissue char-
acteristics. They also prescribe immuno-suppressants to dampen the body's defense as it adjusts to the new organ.

It's human nature for people to help those they know and for people to want to see the results of their generosity. But anonymous transplants come free of tricky psychological baggage.

Sometimes family members feel pressured to donate kidneys and guilt sometimes prevents them from considering all the ramifications. If donor and recipient don't know each other, even subconscious feelings of obligation are irrelevant.

"Obviously, there is no issue of coercion," says Mary Mason, a donor ad-vocate at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle.

After witnessing the "miracle of transplants" through her job so many times, Mason anonymously donated a kidney in August 2004. It wasn't until last year that she met her recipient, a man about her age from Raymond, Wash. He frequently sent her holiday cards and letters through the hospital, expressing a deep need to say thank you in person.

Altruistic donations may be more common, but they are still so new that some transplant centers in the country won't perform them, Mason says. She also does not transpose her own convictions onto others.

"Most normal people would not do it," she says.

Laynee and her family don't know who her new kidney will come from, but doctors want her to have one before November.

Friends of Laynee's mother agreed to be tested as possible donors, telling her "What if this were my kid?"

Some family mem-bers, wracked with guilt, feel compelled to explain to Golladay why they can't bring themselves to donate. They wonder if one of their own children will need a kidney someday. She says she doesn't hold that against them.

Laynee has three sisters, Shantana Schneider, 13, Elise Golladay, 1, and a twin sister, Kammie Schneider. Many times twins provide the best donor match, but Kammie may need her own kidney transplant someday because of similar birth defects, doctors say. Besides, all organ donors must be at least 18.

Laynee stands only as tall as Kammie's chin because her kidneys have
affected her growth hor-mones. They function at 5 percent of normal and are roughly the size of her thumbs, when they should be fist-size.

On good days, Laynee fights with her sisters, does homeschool work and sneaks potato chips while her mother is distracted. At least she tries.

Salt is off-limits in her diet. So are bananas, potatoes and whole grain bread.

On bad days, Laynee sleeps 18 hours a day and suffers joint pains and fevers.

Every night about 7, her mother or stepfather, David Golladay, plugs a tube from a dialysis machine into a catheter protruding from her belly. Stuck by herself for a few hours in her room, she plays handheld educational electronic games and reads books until Kammie crawls into the top bunk.

Then Laynee says her bedtime prayers.

And though she doesn't fully understand the generosity, she usually includes a word or two for all those anonymous donors filling out paperwork in her name.

* Ross Courtney can be reached at 930-8798 or rcourtney@yakimaherald.com.

 
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