Mother of organ donor meets kidney recipients

Mother of organ donor meets kidney recipients

By Justin Zamudio
Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Joshuah Ackerman spent his life pursuing a career in medicine because he wanted to improve the lives of others.

Through his death, he has achieved that goal.

On Feb. 1, Ackerman, 19, missed a turned and crashed while driving home in Childress, about 240 miles north of San Angelo. He was ejected 30 feet from his car and lay unconscious in a field for three hours until a passer-by discovered him. He died from his injuries a week later.

Months before his death, he updated his driver’s license to become an organ donor.

“It was clearly out of the blue,” said Tammy Renfro, Ackerman’s mother. “He had come into the house when I was cooking and said, ‘I am going to be a donor,’ and seemed proud of it.”

She said if it wasn’t for that moment in the kitchen, she wouldn’t have known Ackerman’s intentions.

“It bothered me to just open him up to take his organs, but since that’s what he wanted to do, (the doctors) went through with it. He also shared it with his dad that that’s absolutely what he wanted to do,” Renfro said.

Ackerman’s kidneys went to two recipients, a 27-year-old Lubbock woman and a 66-year-old San Angelo man. Renfro found out who the recipients were, and weeks later reached the woman, meeting her numerous times. She did not make contact with the man until months later. On Mother’s Day she went to the florist to send flowers to Ackerman’s stepmother and was notified she had a delivery for herself.

George Whitacre, the other kidney recipient, had bridged the communication gap between him and Renfro with flowers. Over the following months, they formed a relationship and ultimately met in person last month, sharing photographs and memories with each other.

Talking about getting a new kidney, Whitacre said, “It’s like getting a jail term for 100 years and all of a sudden the governor gets you pardoned.”

Whitacre was approaching three years of being on the waiting list for the organ and was undergoing kidney dialysis when he received news a transplant would be in the works. He was undergoing kidney dialysis three times a week, with each appointment lasting three hours.

“Believe me, once you get off that machine (kidney dialysis), it’s like you got out of jail,” he said.

The transplant, done in University Medical Center in Lubbock, gave him a new lease on life.

Since experiencing the positive effect of her son’s donation, Renfro decided to become an organ donor.

While he was undergoing dialysis, Whitacre turned to the Concho Valley Kidney Support Group, and even after the transplant, he continues to attend the meetings the first Tuesday of the month at Shannon Medical Center to give support and hope to others suffering from kidney disease.

Seven months after the transplant, Whitacre visits with local nephrologist Anthony DeMory. The transplanted kidney is functioning well.

Renfro and Whitacre want to spread the word about the benefits of organ donation and to raise awareness about the limited supply of organs. DeMory’s wife, Sherry, is the organizer of Concho Valley Support Group and a kidney recipient. She said the need for organs, especially kidneys, is high.

There are more than 103,000 people awaiting on organ donation, with 80,975 of them awaiting a kidney, said Michelle Segovia, senior community relations coordinator for Texas Organ Sharing Alliance. On an average day, she said, 18 people die waiting for an organ transplant.

“We work extensively with donor families. It is helpful in their grieving process to know some good came out of their tragedy,” Segovia said.

She said the process of signing up to become an organ donor is easy and can be done at the Texas Department of Public Safety, online at donatelifetexas.org or at registration drives through the local hospitals.

Shannon will host an early intervention screening for kidney health Nov. 14, offering urine and blood tests to check for diabetes, cholesterol levels and kidney failure. DeMory said the intervention will be sponsored through community donations.

“It’s something you don’t give a lot of thought to until something like this happens,” Renfro said about her son’s donation to Whitacre. “It brought me a lot of comfort knowing he’s helping other people. I know had the wreck not happened, he would have been a doctor someday and would have helped people in some way.”

http://www.gosanangelo.com/news/2009/sep/01/mother-of-organ-donor-meets-kidney-recipients/