Pre-K teacher volunteers kidney to Trenton mom

Pre-K teacher volunteers kidney to Trenton mom
Published: Sunday, June 05, 2011, 9:43 AM Updated: Sunday, June 05, 2011, 10:18 AM
By Joyce J. Persico / For The Times

TRENTON — Two women and a child, reunited in a chance meeting at the Hamilton train station, are approaching a life-changing event.
Within a few weeks, one of the women, Levittown, Pa., resident Amanda Marcinkowski, will undergo a final test to determine if she can donate a kidney to Annette Robinson, whose daughter Darriah was Marcinkowski’s student 10 years ago.
For anyone else, the idea of a teacher quickly offering to give her kidney to a woman she hadn’t seen in years might seem questionable. But Marcinkowski, who was Darriah’s preschool teacher, has an explanation.
“Anyone who knows me wouldn’t be surprised by this,” said Marcinkowski, 45, who juggles two teaching jobs while managing a home for her husband and seven adult children — three biological, two adopted and two foster. “It’s just the way I am.”
Living donations of kidneys by friends and family members are not uncommon. But donations by relative strangers like Marcinkowski are rare, according to the New York-based National Kidney Foundation.
Kidney donations are in high demand, with approximately 89,000 people in the U.S. awaiting life-saving kidney transplants, according to the latest count by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Of that number, nearly 2,900 are in New Jersey. There were 198 living donors in the state last year and 141 deceased donors.
Paired donations, matching donors and recipients, are an emerging alternative, with one of the more recent involving 16 people and eight transplants at St. Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston. The patients are matched from a number of national registries for compatibility.
Similar “chain of life” transplants from living donors have helped extend the lives of recipients since kidneys transplanted from living donors last an average of 16 years, double that of a kidney taken from a cadaver.
For Annette Robinson, a Hamilton resident who is working her way through two online master’s degrees while caring for her young daughter, an adult son and her ailing mother, the prospect of getting a new kidney is nothing short of a miracle.
“It is a blessing,” said Robinson, 54, a neatly dressed woman whose easy smile and quiet manner disguise the hardship of going to treatments that occupy nearly 15 hours over three days a week.
The person who brought them together in the first place is 12-year-old Darriah, remembered by Marcinkowski as an unforgettable 3-year-old preschooler.
“She was adorable,” her teacher recalled. “She gave me my first teacher’s bag and it was my first gift from a student. And her mom was so sweet.”
Darriah was also a “hollerer” with a voice so loud she’s reluctant to demonstrate it these days. Robinson said Marcinkowski “was the only one who could calm her down.” She screamed, the teacher discovered, because she missed her mother.
Marcinkowski ran into Darriah and her mom at the Hamilton train station on Feb. 28. Marcinkowski was traveling to New York to see a tennis match; the Robinsons were headed to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick for treatment of a vascular problem in Annette’s arm.
Robinson remembers thinking, “Who is this lady?” when she recognized her old friend.
Marcinkowski’s kidney donation offer came without Robinson even asking. The next day, Robinson started making calls to put the compatibility tests in motion. Her insurance company has picked up all the costs of Marcinkowski’s testing.
“There’s a group of people who have the benefit of others at heart, and for some of those people, the opportunity to donate a kidney is their chance,” said Dr. Bryan Becker, the National Kidney Foundation’s past president. “It’s such a tremendous act.”
According to Becker, all potential donors are subject to a battery of examinations.
“There’s laboratory work, measurements of kidney function and other tests, a physical examination,” he said. “Then there’s usually some form of health psychology evaluation or other type of assessment to make sure the motives and reason for donating seem to be the right ones.”
Becker said the National Kidney Foundation also requires potential donors to meet with a living donor advocate, who can help the donor make sure he or she is making the right decision.
“That donor advocate has a responsibility if he or she doesn’t think the donation is a good idea,” he said.
In Marcinkowski’s case, the teacher said her religious beliefs are a big part of the reason she instantly offered life-saving help to Robinson despite the passage of eight years since they had last spoken.
“We’re both religious,” Marcinkowski said. “I believe God meant for me to do this. I’m not nervous.”
The two women sat together recently in the colorfully painted environs of a schoolroom at the Greater Trenton Area YMCA on Pennington Avenue, where Marcinkowski now teaches.
She said she remains enthusiastic about the donation process and wants other potential donors to know that donating an organ to a person in need is an easier procedure than they might assume.
“Seriously, I’m not crazy,” she insisted. “I told Annette, ‘God brought me to you to do this.’”
Marcinkowski said her family has been more than understanding. When she told her husband, Andrzej, about her offer to donate a kidney, he took the news in stride, asking only, “Who will cook dinner?” she recalled.
Robinson, a former customer service representative at Educational Testing Service, was 42 when she gave birth to Darriah and her high blood pressure soared.
“That tipped the bottle,” she said. “I had to start dialysis in 2007.”
Now she goes to a facility in Hamilton three times a week for treatments that last 210 minutes, or longer if machines are slow or she isn’t immediately taken in for her appointments. Afterwards her energy is depleted.
Marcinkowski noted the circuitous path that led to her sitting with a woman who, if one more test gives the desired result, will receive her kidney this summer.
She became a teacher at Darriah’s former preschool thanks, in part, to the state’s former Abbott Schools program, which funded free preschools and allowed her to attain required additional teaching credentials, she said.
“If Abbott hadn’t made me a teacher, you wouldn’t be getting a kidney,” Marcinkowski said to Robinson with a laugh. ”I just want you to have a better life.”

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