A peoria wife gives up a kidney to prolong the life of her husband

[okarol]

You just do it
A peoria wife gives up a kidney to prolong the life of her husband

By CLARE HOWARD (choward@pjstar.com)
OF THE JOURNAL STAR
Posted Sep 05, 2009 @ 08:03 PM
Last update Sep 05, 2009 @ 08:06 PM

Jim Stuttle lived with progressive kidney failure for 34 years, from diagnosis at age 20 until 10 days ago when his wife's left kidney became his left kidney.

Within minutes after it was positioned in his body and infused with his blood, the kidney flushed pink and began working.

That was hours after surgery on Rosemary Stuttle, months after the couple had been accepted into the living organ donor program at Chicago's Northwestern Memorial Hospital and decades after they first glimpsed the complexity, worry and insurance complications in store for them.

Even before they were married, Stuttle was virtually uninsurable because as a college sophomore, he decided to find out if he had inherited his mother's polycystic kidney disease.

He had.

"Don't get tested," said Stuttle, 54. "When there is a family history of disease, you're better off living your life as if you have the disease. Deal with the necessary diet and doctor appointments, but don't get the diagnosis. Once you have confirmed it, you'll never get health insurance on your own. The test meant I couldn't get (individual) health or life insurance."

Stuttle was 14 when his mother died, 19 when his father died. Two brothers had also died of deaths unrelated to kidney failure by the time Stuttle faced his own positive diagnosis and the knowledge that his mother's slow progressive illness and her debilitating dialysis would likely be his future.

He decided not to tell his remaining family that he had polycystic kidney disease. He did, however, tell Bradley University student Rosemary Keating. They intended to marry, and he told her his disease was inherited, had a 50 percent chance of being passed to children and odds were good that in 30 years he'd be in end-stage renal failure.

She was unflappable and said they'd deal with those issues as they faced them. The couple married in 1978. They have no children.

"Somehow, Rosemary always assumed she'd be the donor," Jim Stuttle said.

After graduating from Bradley University with a degree in geology, Stuttle began work as a financial adviser. He was employed by Dean Witter and Merrill Lynch before becoming a self-employed financial consultant with his own clients.

As the years passed and his disease progressed, cysts grew over both his kidneys, which should weigh about 8 ounces in a healthy adult, but his had grown to 20 and 25 pounds with the weight of the cysts. He had gotten to the point where bending over to tie his shoelaces was a problem.

To make room in his body for the transplanted kidney, Stuttle had a nephrectomy, done laparoscopically, removing his diseased left kidney. That procedure was done at Chicago's Northwestern Memorial Hospital in July.

One month after the diseased kidney was removed, the Stuttles stood in the lobby of Chicago's Residence Inn at 5:45 a.m. and looked out on East Walton Street to one of the summer's regular deluges.

Neither had slept well. They decided to take a taxi the few blocks to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where they were met in the lobby. Jim Stuttle kissed his wife's hand as they were led to the elevators to check in on the seventh floor.

Rosemary Stuttle, 53, was almost immediately called into the pre-op suite. The couple tried to linger a moment in a final hug. At 6:12 a.m. they slipped off their wedding rings, hurriedly handed them to Jim Stuttle's sister Gay Gilliam for safe keeping and went separate ways down the carpeted hospital corridors.

"Time has been crawling along, and this last day has been like a freight train," Stuttle said.

They would not see each other again for 14 hours.

Rosemary Stuttle is marketing director at Methodist Medical Center in Peoria. Her health insurance through work covers the two of them. Methodist does not perform living kidney transplants, but the couple had been accepted for the procedure at OSF Saint Francis Medical Center. After they began working through the procedures leading up to the operation there, Methodist changed insurance carriers. That was in January, and the new insurance company would not cover the procedure at OSF.

The couple contacted Northwestern. Doctors there initially rejected Rosemary Stuttle as a donor because of what appeared to be pre-diabetes.

"We told 12 people I needed a transplant, and five volunteered to be tested," Jim Stuttle said in a voice laden with gratitude.

As those five were tested and rejected, a question nagged at both Jim and Rosemary Stuttle. They questioned her pre-diabetes determination. Further testing showed it was actually an elevated result because of medication she takes following a bout with thyroid cancer in 2003.

They were back on track.

Rosemary Stuttle's surgery started at 8:45 a.m. At 10:10 a.m. her left kidney was removed and taken to one side of the operating room, where it was trimmed of unwanted tissue and flushed with a solution to remove all remaining blood to prevent clotting.

The organ was placed in a sterile sack in an Igloo ice chest.

After her operation, Rosemary Stuttle went to post-op, her kidney waited on ice, and the room was disinfected and prepared for Jim Stuttle's surgery.

With a weak smile, he left pre-op at 11:55 a.m. The operation started at 12:30 p.m. Once doctors and nurses were positioned, lights in the operating room dimmed except those on Jim Stuttle's abdomen. The first incision cut deep.

At 12:50 p.m. Rosemary Stuttle was back in her room on the 11th floor. She received a phone call telling her that surgery on her husband had started and everything was going fine. She smiled and closed her eyes.

Rosemary and Jim Stuttle had gotten this far in a system where, for many, hope and current public policy are in conflict with a system that pays expensive and debilitating kidney dialysis indefinitely but limits to three years the coverage of less expensive anti-rejection medications for organ transplants.

Some patients are forced to go off medications, lose their transplanted kidney and return to dialysis. Correcting that conflict would save the federal government billions of dollars annually, said Dr. Anton Skaro, one of the Stuttles' surgeons.

Jim Stuttle was in surgery about 2 1/2 hours. He went from post-op to his own room by late afternoon. By about 8 p.m. Rosemary Stuttle decided to get out of bed and walk two rooms down to see her husband. It was a brief visit because the effort left her shaking.

The next day they both had pain medication and felt remarkably well. They tried to put on their wedding rings, but their fingers were too swollen because of all the fluids injected into their systems.

By Saturday they were discharged from the hospital and back at the Residence Inn with a visiting nurse from the hospital.

Sunday they walked several blocks along Michigan Avenue and stopped at Crate and Barrel to look at couches. They walked back to the hotel.

"I felt great, but by Sunday night and Monday I crashed. There was much more pain," Jim Stuttle said.

In a voice heavy with emotion, he said, "I am blessed. I have so many wonderful friends and most especially I have Rosemary in my life. She has changed my life."

Rosemary Stuttle, who expects to be back at work within weeks, said prior to the transplant, Methodist hospital CEO Michael Bryant expressed admiration and awe over her decision to donate one of her kidneys.

"I said it's what most people would do. I can live perfectly well with one kidney. We've dealt with Jim's declining health for years. Now we have an opportunity to resume normal lives," she said.

She is fast to dismiss any notion that giving her husband a kidney was anything heroic.

"In the past five years, my best friend died of ovarian cancer, my mother died of a stroke and my only sibling has lung cancer. If I could have done anything to make them better, I would," she said. "James is the one person in my life I can make better. It's a no-brainer. It's not courageous. You just do it."

Clare Howard can be reached at 686-3250 or choward@pjstar.com.

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