Spray tan? Chance meeting leads to kidney donation

[okarol]

Published: May 29, 2012 3:00 a.m.
Chance meeting leads to kidney donation
If Brianna McCard hadn’t gotten a spray tan in January, Heather Tegtmeyer’s father might not be getting a new kidney.

Or, as Tegtmeyer muses, if she hadn’t switched from her emergency room job at Parkview Regional Medical Center and become a case manager, she might never had met McCard.

It’s funny, they both say, the way God puts the right people in each other’s paths from time to time.

The story here is that in January, McCard, an infectious-disease clinical coordinator at Parkview, was in the hall talking up her spray tan, which, she said, was better than using a tanning booth.

Tegtmeyer walked up, and as the conversation progressed, she mentioned that she couldn’t tan because she was on two different blood pressure medicines.

McCard asked why Tegtmeyer, a small woman who didn’t seem the type to have high blood pressure, needed the meds. Is she stressed?

Well, Tegtmeyer said, she has polycystic kidney disease. It is inherited and causes cysts to grow in the kidney, making them swell and fail. Her dad has the same condition, she said, and just went on a waiting list for a new kidney.

McCard asked the predictable, “Can I do anything?”

Tegtmeyer responded, “Are you A positive?”

McCard is A positive, and just like that she decided she’d agree to donate a kidney to Tegtmeyer’s father, a man she had never even seen.

“I’m doing it because I feel it’s the right thing to do,” McCard said. “God told me to do it, and you do what God tells you.”

It’s been a long haul. For months, McCard has been going through test after test after test – blood tests, psychological exams, urine tests, scans.

“They really put you through the wringer,” McCard said.

McCard’s decision may have been spur of the moment, but it wasn’t totally impulsive. McCard, Tegtmeyer said, later told her that she had been pondering that some people donate bone marrow or organs. She had wondered what she might do to make a difference in someone’s life.

As a nurse, she had seen lots of people on dialysis, sometimes for years, awaiting a transplant, knowing some would never get a transplant.

So the chance meeting between the two came at just the right moment.

When McCard was finally approved as a suitable donor, “I wanted to shout it from the rooftops,” Tegtmeyer said. “I wanted to tell everyone, but she wouldn’t let me.”

Indeed, McCard kept the whole topic under wraps, telling only family members who might need to know and a few close friends.

Then along came a guy from Las Vegas.

McCard had told her best friend what was happening, and she happened to tell her boyfriend, who is in the promotional business in Las Vegas and who decided McCard’s tale was inspirational.

The man’s name is Mark Hornsby, and he pressed and nagged and cajoled and pressed some more. McCard finally caved, and a few days ago Hornsby set up a website telling the tale of McCard and Tegtmeyer and her father, Jim Van Every.

The website also asks people to make small donations to help McCard – who has used up all her time off – pay her living expenses while she is out of work after surgery. McCard says that irritates her.

“I don’t want to be compensated for doing the right thing,” McCard says. She’ll get by during the three weeks she will be off work, she says.

To Tegtmeyer, she hopes the tale will prove inspirational to some people. If just one person sees it and is motivated to do something – anything – to help someone else it will be worth it.

Tegtmeyer said she would have donated a kidney to her father in the blink of an eye, but she can’t donate because of her condition.

“To find out I can’t help was devastating,” Tegtmeyer said.

The surgery is scheduled for June 19.

http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20120529/LOCAL0201/305299958/1002/LOCAL