Pasco teen inspired by kidney transplant

Pasco teen inspired by kidney transplant
By Sara Schilling
Monday, Apr. 27, 2009

The kidney transplant that Kelly Questad recently observed in Seattle changed more than the patient's life.

It also got the 18-year-old Pasco student thinking she might like to be a surgical nurse one day.

"I always wanted to go into labor and delivery. But there's another option now," she said.

Questad watched the surgery at Virginia Mason Medical Center through a job shadow program organized by Donate Life Today. That's the organ donor registry covering Washington and Montana.

The group has been putting on the program for high school students for three years.

This year, a handful of teens from across the state will visit Virginia Mason, Swedish Medical Center in Seattle and Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane to meet transplant teams and observe their work. The job shadow experiences mostly are happening in April, which is national Donate Life Month.

Questad got to meet transplant workers at Virginia Mason -- from surgeons to social workers. She also got to watch the kidney transplant.

She and the other job shadow student were close enough to the doctors to hear their conversations. A medical student acted as their guide and explained what was going on.

They weren't told anything about the patient, except that he was receiving the organ from a friend in a live donation. Questad said the surgery went smoothly.

When she and the other student walked out of the operating room, "their eyes were like saucers," said Ann Rutledge, Virginia Mason transplant program director.

"They saw a little bit of both pieces, a kidney being taken from the living donor, and (the organ) being taken down the hall to the recipient," she said.

Rutledge picked Quested for the job shadow based on an essay the student wrote. Quested, a senior at Kingspoint Christian School in Pasco, talked about one of her teachers, who has a daughter awaiting a double lung transplant.

Many others are in the same kind of limbo. Right now, more than 100,000 people in the U.S. are waiting for life-saving organ transplants, said Molly Schoeb, education program manager for Donate Life Today. Eighteen of them die every day, she said.

The job shadow program is a way to spread the message among young people of the importance of organ donation, Schoeb said. The group also coordinates classroom presentations that feature real patients or family members.

Students who hear the presentations often are most surprised to learn that one organ, eye and tissue donor can save or enhance more than 50 people's lives, Schoeb said.

Questad said the job shadow affected her in more ways than one.

She's wanted to be a labor and delivery nurse since she watched the birth of her little sister a few years ago. But organ donation is a miracle along those lines as well, she said.

"When a baby is born, there's a new life," Questad said. "When you donate an organ, you're giving (someone) another chance at life."

For more information on Donate Life Today, including how to arrange a classroom presentation, go to www.donatelife today.com.

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