Altruism motivates kidney donor

January 8th, 2011

If Mary Patalita ever needs a kidney, she’ll go to top of list

By Ellie Bogue
of The News-Sentinel

It’s one thing to donate money, food or clothing, but how many people would be willing to donate an organ without first knowing the recipient?

For Mary Patalita, it was an easy choice. She recently donated a kidney without knowing who would be on the receiving end.

“I had a high school friend, my same age, who donated one altruistically and it got me thinking, why not?” Patalita, 63, said. She recently donated a kidney at the Lutheran Hospital Kidney Transplant Center.

“Altruistic donors are not all that common, but we do have a few,” Valerie Barto, a registered nurse and Living Donor Coordinator for the center, said.

Lutheran Hospital’s Kidney Transplant Center, which opened in 2007, is the only one in the region. Since then, 86 transplants have been performed at the unit, with 45 of those coming from living donors. They do two to three transplants a month. Nineteen have been performed this year, with 12 of those coming from living donors; no more than three have been altruistic.

Barto says a person can very easily live a normal healthy life with one kidney.

“We often find patients who need a new kidney may have been living with only one kidney all their lives and never knew it until something went wrong with it,” Barto said.

Patalita got a few objections from her family.

“My son wanted to know what would happen if something went wrong with the one kidney I had left,” said Patalita.

That is one of the questions frequently asked by donors, and Patalita was told a donor goes to the top of the waiting list should something go wrong with their one remaining kidney.

“Normally there is a two-to-three year wait for a kidney, but if you are a donor you go to the top of the list,” Barto concurs.

“The donation cost me nothing,” Patalita said.

All of her medical bills were either covered by the recipient’s insurance or the Lutheran Transplant Center through Medicare.

“If a donor gets a bill, they are told to forward it to us and we will take care of it,” Barto said.

This means all the blood work and X-rays a donor goes through before the surgery, to make sure they are healthy, is paid for, as is their surgery, hospital stay, and even the pain medication they receive after the operation. The Transplant Center will also keep in touch with them for the next several years to make sure their body has adjusted to the change.

The kidney donation is done by laparoscopic surgery. Patalita has four 1-inch incisions on her abdomen, with a slightly longer one over her navel.

“I think that’s where they took it out,” Patalita said.

Patalita met the recipient, a 70-year-old man and his wife, two weeks before the surgery. She says they thanked her for her generosity. While she was recovering from surgery, she paid him a quick visit.

“His room was right across the hall from mine,” Patalita said.

“Donors do not have to meet their recipients if they don’t want to; it is totally up to them,” Barto said.

“I feel like I really gave this man his life back,” Patalita said. “He was spending three days a week in dialysis before the surgery.”

Now that she is recovering, she would like to get the word out about how easy it is to give someone the gift of a new life through a kidney transplant.

“I feel completely at peace with my decision to do this. I feel it was something God wanted me to do,” Patalita said.

For more information on how to donate a kidney, contact Barto at 435-6211.

Tags:
Posted in ALTRUISTIC DONATION, SEEKING KIDNEY DONOR | No Comments »

Kidney donors give gift that keeps on giving

January 8th, 2011

Gigantic organ swap helps county patients enjoy healthier holidays
by Jeanette Der Bedrosian | Staff Writer

Jonathan Harris, 22, of Silver Spring went under the knife last month to receive the gift of life: a new kidney. Harris was one of 32, including eight from Montgomery County, to participate in one of the world’s largest-ever kidney exchanges.

Dialysis was like a second job for Kiran Kochhar, a Colesville resident who had lost one kidney and damaged his other due to chemotherapy for leukemia.

Kochhar, who works full time as an engineer, traveled two hours each way to get to Washington Hospital Center, and that’s not including the four hours he spent three days a week on the dialysis machine itself.

Kochhar has type O blood, and finding a match was difficult. His wife was willing to donate her own kidney, but the couple’s kidneys weren’t compatible. Last month, a new trend in kidney transplants gave him hope.

Kochhar was among 16 donor-patient pairs to participate in one of the world’s largest-ever kidney exchanges. Like Kochhar, many kidney disease patients have no matching family donors and face a long wait on the kidney donor list, so a doctor at Georgetown University Hospital got creative with patients who had family members or friends willing to donate on their behalf. The process goes something like this: If a mother and son are not a match for a kidney donation, there may be another pairing that has the same problem, and the two groups could potentially swap donors.

That’s exactly what Dr. Keith Melancon did on a larger scale in November for the 16 donor-patient pairs. Five of the patients and three of the donors were from Montgomery County.

Kochhar’s wife said the swap ended a painful waiting game for her and her kidney-needing husband.

“You just kind of wait and wait, and you’re always ready to hear there is a kidney available,” Medha Kochhar said. “But it didn’t happen. You have to match on everything. You don’t know if it will go through or not, so you keep your fingers crossed and hope for the best.”

But Kiran Kochhar found a match in Patricia Harris, a 58-year-old Silver Spring mother of 22-year-old Jonathan Harris. In exchange for Patricia Harris giving her kidney to Kiran Kochhar, her son was given one from someone else in the swap. Jonathan Harris had been suffering from renal failure since he was 12 years old and already had one failed transplant. His mom said the swap was a double blessing for her.

“I realize how blessed I am, that my health at 58 years old is such that I could do a tremendous, life-giving thing,” she said. “I started out with one mission, and that was to try and improve the quality of life for my son. As a result, I was able to improve the quality of life for someone else as well.”

Patricia Harris had helped her son with his nightly dialysis for years, a routine she learned to cope with and build around his schooling. When she met Kiran Kochhar and his wife, Medha Kochhar, it was an emotional experience.

“That was huge, because I got to meet him and his wife,” Patricia Harris said. “And his wife—we were the caretakers of dialysis patients—we had a bond, you know what I mean? She just said, ‘Thank you for giving my husband a kidney,’ and I knew what that meant. That was just huge. It’s been a tremendous form of giving, and it’s something I just hope a lot of other people consider.”

“I have a new freedom,” said Kiran Kochhar. “I’m liberated. I was tied to a chair, and now I can travel anywhere.”

Kidney swaps are growing in popularity, because many kidney disease patients have antibodies in their bloodstream as a result of race, pregnancy, previous infections or dialysis, according to Melancon, who is director of kidney and pancreas transplant patients at Georgetown University Hospital and Washington Hospital Center. These antibodies make the patient less likely to find a match. With Washington, D.C., having such a racially mixed population, more patients have the antibodies, and, as a result, a tough time finding a kidney donor match, he said.

In this round of swaps, 10 of the 16 patients would be considered a racial minority, according to Marianne Worley, the director of media relations with Georgetown University Hospital.

“We are trying to address the group of people who, number one, have the highest rate of kidney disease, and number two, who have the hardest time getting a kidney transplant,” Melancon said.

Melancon keeps a list of patients in need of a kidney that includes their blood types and the antibodies they have. A computer program goes in and fits the pieces of the puzzle together to create as many matches as possible. A technique called plasmaphoresis helps remove some of the antibodies in preparation for surgery.

Similar swaps were organized by Melancon in January, July and December 2009 as well as in June 2010. Each consecutive swap has grown in size, leading up to this one, which was done at roughly the same time as another unrelated 16-way exchange in Texas.

Such a large undertaking is no easy feat for Melancon or the staff of the hospitals that helped out, but seeing the patients meet their donors makes it worth it, he said.

“This takes an incredible amount of work from the nurses and the coordinators,” he said. “It’s an incredible amount of work above and beyond what they normally have to do, and they get to see the fruits of their labor. When they see the big picture of all this coming together—the raw emotion of it all—the message comes home. It’s really my favorite part of the process.”

Tags: , , ,
Posted in ALTRUISTIC DONATION, SEEKING KIDNEY DONOR | No Comments »

Letter about mother’s need for kidney prompts responses

January 8th, 2011

BY KATHIE DICKERSON • Staff Writer • December 26, 2010

COSHOCTON — In this season of sharing, two women have stepped forward and offered Sherie Hunt the gift of life.

Sherie’s son, 6-year-old Jesse Hunt, wrote a letter to Santa asking for a kidney for his mother. Sherie’s kidneys have been damaged by Type 1 diabetes and she’s been undergoing dialysis for the past couple of years.

“It would just break me into a million pieces if my children were in that situation,” said Samantha Moyer, a 26-year-old Nashport mother of two who has offered one of her kidneys to Sherie.

She read about Sherie Hunt in the Dec. 12 edition of the Zanesville Times Recorder. The article also ran in the Coshocton Tribune since Hunt is a Coshocton County resident.

“I can’t really explain what happened,” Moyer said. “I read it and reread it and I cried, and thought, ‘What can I do to help these people?’”

After talking with Sherie’s mother, Kathy Burris, Moyer contacted Ohio State University Medical Center Transplant Center. She’s waiting for the center to call her back and set up an appointment to be tested.

But even if she isn’t a match for Sherie, Moyer said she can hold onto to her kidney until someone who matches her needs it, then that family can get tested to see if anyone is a match for Sherie.

David Crawford, with OSUMC media relations staff, confirmed this.

“It will be like helping her even if I’m not a match,” Moyer said. “It’s like paying it forward. I like to think that if anyone in my family ever needed something like this, someone would step forward.”

Moyer said she was touched by Jesse’s selflessness, asking Santa for something for his mother.

Frazeysburg-area resident Bonnie Peck felt the same way. She also has contacted the transplant center to get set up for testing.

“All that little boy wanted is for his mom to get well,” Peck said.

Peck also doesn’t want Sherie’s mother to go through the same thing she went through.

“I know what it’s like to lose a child,” Peck said. “I don’t want Sherie’s mother to go through that.”

Her son, 19-year-old Kenneth Peck Jr., died suddenly of a heart attack in November 2007.

“(Sherie’s) mother is so sweet and doesn’t want to lose a child,” Peck said. “But she told me if I have any concerns or decide I don’t want to do it, not to feel bad. I told her not to have any concerns; I want to do this, and if I’m a match, I will.”

Peck said Kenneth was the oldest of four children and a big help to her as a single mother.

“He was the father of the house and took care of his brother and two sisters every day while I worked,” she said.

Burris said she is overwhelmed by the women’s generosity.

“I sure do hope that one of them is able to help,” she said. “They both sounded very sincere.”

Sherie is recuperating from surgery performed a couple of weeks ago when doctors had to remove three toes on her right foot, the result of Charcot foot, a progressive degenerative condition that affects the joints in the feet. The condition is caused by several diseases, but primarily by diabetes.

Sherie said she’s afraid to get her hopes up right now, but she is grateful the women have offered to try and help her.

“It was really nice of two people who are strangers to step up and make this offer,” she said.

Jesse was counting the days until Christmas and hoping his mom would get well enough to get up and out of the wheelchair, where’s she been while her foot heals.

“It’s the season of miracles, and I hope to have a Christmas present for Sherie,” Moyer said.

kdickers@coshoctontribune.com; (740) 295-3442

Tags: , ,
Posted in ALTRUISTIC DONATION, SEEKING KIDNEY DONOR | No Comments »

Hero’ gives kidney to stranger

January 8th, 2011

By Sarah Rohrs / Times-Herald
Posted: 01/01/2011 01:01:19 AM PST

Lindy Pickens of Vallejo enters the new year with renewed health, thanks to a man she had never even met until he had intervened.

Without even knowing her name, Jim Claflin of Chico had given Pickens, 57, one of his kidneys, reviving her and saving her from years of dialysis.

“He’ll always be my hero,” Pickens said.

Other than a little pain in her right side, Pickens said, she feels great now — and profoundly grateful to a Chico State University geography professor who simply wanted to give.

Claflin, also 57, decided last year to donate a kidney without knowing who the recipient would be.

“The idea stuck with me (donating an organ) and I kept thinking about it off and on and then just decided to do it,” Claflin said.

“It was a way for me to give, and I’m just more comfortable giving than receiving,” he added.

Claflin’s timing was perfect for Pickens, who has a real estate brokerage on Tennessee Street and is involved in Leadership Vallejo and other community efforts.

Before the Dec. 14 operation at UC Davis Medical Center, Pickens was suffering from renal failure as a result of polycystic kidney disease, an inherited condition that began to trouble her in her late 40s, she said. Chronically tired for several years, she had also begun to retain water.

On a waiting list for a kidney donation for about six months, she had undergone dialysis for four months, a process that artificially performs the organ’s functions.

People can function, even thrive, with just one kidney, a factor which greatly influenced Claflin, a self-described “health freak,” he said. An avid mountain biker who also regularly works out, Claflin eats well, and doesn’t smoke or drink.

“We have two and we can survive with one,” he said.

Claflin decided to donate a kidney after his daughter, a nursing student, told him about a class on organ transplants. He went onto the Internet and eventually found the UC Davis Medical Center transplant center.

Pickens had expected to be on a wait list for a kidney for four or five years and was hoping for a donation from a live donor, which is generally more successful than an organ from someone who has passed away, she said.

Unexpectedly, Claflin popped up and turned out to be a perfect match, she said.

The two didn’t meet or even know each other’s names until Dec. 21 when they both agreed to come to a follow-up medical appointment together. Donors and recipients can choose to remain anonymous, if they prefer, they said.

The meeting was a “very emotional” one for Pickens, she said.

Claflin said the encounter made it all the more real.

“It was incredible and amazing. It was the highlight of this whole experience,” he said.

“I’m just glad Lindy is doing well,” he added.

The pair agreed to publicize their experience as a way to raise awareness of the need for live organ donations.

Between 16,000 and 18,000 people are on waiting lists nationwide for kidney donations, UC Davis living donor program coordinator Sharon Stencel said.

“There’s a huge need,” Stencel added.

Besides Claflin, the center has had just one other altruistic kidney donor in 2010, Stencel said.

Kidney wait lists are the longest, she said, because people can live with dialysis for years, though with a diminished quality of life.

With the advent of a new year, Pickens said she will start lecturing and doing other work to drum up support for the live donor program.

When asked if she’ll keep in touch with Claflin, Pickens said “absolutely,” with a catch in her voice.

Tags:
Posted in ALTRUISTIC DONATION, SEEKING KIDNEY DONOR | No Comments »

Transplant donor gives away organ to stranger

November 25th, 2010

* By Amanda Williams »

A MOTHER-OF-ONE has become Oxford’s first ‘altruistic’ kidney donor by giving the organ to someone she does not know.

The procedure – where the living donate an organ or tissue to a non-relative – has only been legal in Britain for three years.

Di Franks has just recovered after the first transplant of this kind carried out at the Churchill Hospital in Headington and last night she said: “It is the biggest gift you can ever give, and the best thing I have ever done.”

For legal reasons the Oxford Mail cannot reveal who Mrs Franks donated to, but they are believed to live in Oxfordshire.

Mrs Franks said she was inspired by a friend in America who donated a kidney to someone anonymously.

“Even thinking about it now, I get quite tearful,” she said. “I can’t describe the feeling I have from being able to give someone their life back, and to return a whole person to their family.

“After I had the operation, the person I donated my kidney to wrote me a letter.

“I will never know who it is, but to read the words ‘Dear Donor… thank you so much’, well, it’s just indescribable.”

To date only 16 people have signed up and undergone the procedure in Britain.

Professor Peter Friend, director of the Oxford Transplant Centre, said the giving of an organ without knowing who it was going to was the “ultimate act of generosity”.

He said: “It’s quite a big operation to remove a kidney which, as long as the donor is healthy, comes with a very small risk, but a risk nonetheless.

“Many people have heard of people donating to a loved one or a family member.

“But this is the ultimate act of kindness and generosity. It is true altruism.

“Giving but not expecting anything back. Stories such as Mrs Franks are the life blood of organ donation.”

In 2008, the Oxford Mail launched a campaign to encourage people around the county to join the NHS Organ Donor Register.

At the time, just 177,531 Oxfordshire people were registered to become an organ donor after they died.

But since the campaign launched, the figure has leapt to 204,431.

Mrs Franks, who lives in Lambourn, west Berkshire, said signing up to become an altruistic donor was the best thing she has ever done.

She said: “ I would like to thank everyone at the Living Donor Programme at the Churchill Hospital, Oxford.

“They’re truly amazing and wonderful people. It has been an honour and privilege to have got to know them and to have been part of the team that enabled this donation to successfully go ahead.

“I have nothing but praise for everyone there

Posted in ALTRUISTIC DONATION | No Comments »

Working on a Bioartificial Kidney

November 25th, 2010

SFGate looks at ongoing work in replicating the function of a kidney: “The artificial kidney is still at least five years away from being tested in a human patient. Researchers have built a large model of the kidney – so big that it filled a hospital room – and used it on human patients to show that the theories behind it will work. And parts of the small kidney have been successfully tested in animals. If [the] team is successful, the kidney will be about the size of a large cup of coffee, and it would last for years, maybe decades, and require no pumps or batteries. Patients wouldn’t need anti-rejection drugs either, because there would be no exposed natural tissues for the immune system to attack. … The artificial kidney will be made of two parts – a filter side and a cellular side. On the filter side, silicone membranes with microscopic pores will separate toxins from the blood, much as dialysis machines do. The body’s own blood pressure will force blood through the filter, so no pumps will be needed. The key to the filtration side is the silicone membrane, which can be made fairly inexpensively and precisely, much as computer chips are. … On the cellular side, the filtered blood will be pumped over a bed of cells taken from either the patient’s own failing kidneys or from a donor. The cells will sense the chemical makeup of the filtered blood and trigger the body to maintain appropriate levels of salt, sugar and water. … It mimics more of a kidney function than just dialysis. When we think of kidneys, we think of waste removal. And dialysis just does that. Dialysis doesn’t make you healthy – it just keeps you alive.”

Link: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/11/16/MNKF1GBCRJ.DTL

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Kidney Transplant Recipient Marks 40 Years

November 25th, 2010

Blanchard Received Donation From Younger Brother

POSTED: 12:23 pm EST November 17, 2010
UPDATED: 6:27 pm EST November 17, 2010
[EMAIL: Kidney Transplant Recipient Marks 40 Years] Email [PRINT: Kidney Transplant Recipient Marks 40 Years] Print
[COMMENTS: Kidney Transplant Recipient Marks 40 Years] Comments

CONCORD, N.H. — Forty years ago, Jim Blanchard was given the gift of life by his brother, and he said he has treasured every second of it.

The retired Concord school teacher said he wasn’t feeling well in 1969, suffering from extreme nausea. He said he tried to hide the condition from his wife but eventually went to a doctor.

“He said, ‘Maybe I ought to give you a blood test,’ so he did, and he called up two days later and said I have three months to live,” Blanchard said. “And so he said to my wife, who took the call, ‘Better not tell him because this is his last Christmas,’ is what he said.”

At age 36, Blanchard was diagnosed with glomerulonephritis, a condition that attacked both of his kidneys.

Blanchard’s younger brother, Alan, volunteered to donate a kidney. Doctors said Jim Blanchard would be lucky if the transplant lasted for five years, even if the surgery was successful.

“They told him in the beginning if the kidney lasted five years, it was considered successful in those days, because they had nothing to measure it by because there weren’t that many done, really,” Blanchard said.

Blanchard is still going strong, 40 years after the surgery. He is believed to be one of the longest surviving kidney transplant recipients in the state.

His brother passed away four years ago, but Blanchard said they both lived relatively normal, active lives following the operation.

Jim and Alan Blanchard both helped found the New Hampshire Kidney Foundation in 1971.

Blanchard said he feels blessed in many ways, but he said everything came together for a reason.

He still lives in Concord with his wife and has five grandchildren and one great grandchild.

http://www.wmur.com/r/25826830/detail.html

Posted in SAVING SOMEONE YOU KNOW, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Gift Of Kidney Makes Words Of Faith Come Alive

November 25th, 2010

STEPHEN O’KANE, Staff Writer

Published: November 25, 2010

(Clockwise, from top left) Chris Wilson is joined by his wife Kelley and their sons Garrett, 7, and Matthew, 2, at St. Stephen the Martyr Church, Lilburn. (Photos by Michael Alexander)

LILBURN—This Thanksgiving, two St. Stephen the Martyr parishioners have truly realized the meaning behind the famous phrase from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, “so we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually parts of one another.”

As the holiday weekend approaches, Chris Wilson and Cristina Zakis continue to recover from an operation that transplanted one of her kidneys to her long-time friend Wilson, after he found out that a bad case of strep throat had spread to his kidneys, significantly affecting the efficiency of the organs.

It was a difficult few years for Wilson and his family. In 2003, shortly after he and his wife, Kelley, had their first son, Garrett, Wilson began undergoing chemotherapy for an autoimmune disease caused by strep throat. However, the therapy was not enough to combat the disease and Wilson was told he needed to find a kidney donor or he could die. The wait for a donor, Wilson was told, was three years—possibly too long to save his life.

This was devastating news for the couple, who had just brought their first child into the world. The Wilsons began to pray about their situation and sought comfort in their Lilburn parish community.

“This church is the epitome of a community church,” said Wilson about his parish, which has proved to be a beacon of love and support after first learning of his pressing situation.

Then, in what some would describe as a chance meeting and others divine providence, the two St. Stephen parishioners, Wilson and Zakis, who had first met in college at The Catholic University of America in the late 1980s, reconnected in the narthex of the small Lilburn parish, some 10 years after they had last seen each other. Both grew up in Georgia and were amused that they had found each other back in their home state. The two families became close friends. Each now has two boys.

(Clockwise, from top right) Cristina Zakis was supported by her sons Ricky, 7, and Paul, 4, and her husband Peter in her effort to donate her kidney to parishioner and family friend Chris Wilson.

When Wilson spoke with his pastor, Father Paddy Donaghey, about his need for a kidney, the priest shared the request with the parish. But finding a match proved to be difficult.

It was during Mass at St. Stephen’s one Sunday, as Wilson and Zakis were both in the narthex tending to their young children, that Zakis learned of her friend’s situation and asked if there was anything she could do to help him.

Wilson said he needed to find a kidney donor. Zakis then learned the two shared the same blood type, making her a possible match. She realized that the operation could save her friend’s life and immediately considered the possibility, knowing she needed to discuss it with her family first. Her husband, Peter, who also knew Wilson in college, strongly felt that his wife should go through with the tests to see if she was a true match. It was a confirmation of what Zakis had already felt in her spirit.

Zakis sensed from very early on, before she even completed her compatibility tests, that she would be the one to give Wilson a kidney. She remembers praying for God’s will to be done and accepting whatever path lay before her.

“I felt such a sense of peace come over me,” said Zakis. “It was all in God’s hands, and I didn’t need to worry about anything.”

Wilson shared a sense of peace learning that Zakis would be his donor.

“What are the odds of Cristina and I going to the same college? What are the odds of Cristina and I seeing each other after 10 years? What are the odds of us being the same blood type?” he asks.

Going through three rounds of testing to find out if she was a match, Zakis felt more confident with each test that she would be the donor. She felt hopeful about the whole situation, knowing it was in God’s hands and that all would be well. It came as no surprise to her when she learned she was a perfect match.

But both Zakis and Wilson continued to feel blessed at the outpouring of support from St. Stephen’s. The close-knit community rallied around the two families, offering prayers and support, as well as financial assistance since the Wilsons knew they had a steep insurance deductible to meet if the surgery was to be performed.

It was an amazing sight to see their fellow parishioners come together in the way they did. Wilson, who is very active in the community, initially felt a little awkward being on the receiving end of so much support and was humbled by how quickly people came to his aid.

“I was overwhelmed with emotion,” said Wilson. “The amount of giving in this church is amazing. … This church truly is a family.”

The Knights of Columbus Council from St. Stephen’s held a fundraiser for the family, raising nearly $10,000 toward the cost of the operation. It was a touching realization for the families to know that their health was a priority in their community.

Father Donaghey also held a special parish-wide Mass to ask for blessings for the pair as they prepared for the operation. The church was packed with supportive parishioners gathered to pray for the two families.

Described by Wilson as a “beautiful and solemn evening,” a very special moment came when he approached Zakis, who was serving as a Eucharistic minister, to receive the body of Christ. He said that it made him appreciate more how the church is the living body of Christ and how Zakis would soon donate a part of herself to save his life.

“Cristina is my angel on earth,” said Wilson. “A living donor means giving a piece of yourself. … It is the ultimate in altruism. That is true giving. It is hard to see in this day and age.”

The operation, performed at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta on Nov. 12, was a success. Both are recovering at home, and their families look forward to spending this unique and special Thanksgiving together. Both recognize the role that prayer had in this situation and remain extremely grateful to each other, their families and the community that supported them through it all.

“This shows that there is a purpose to suffering,” said Zakis, who shared her story in hopes of highlighting the importance of others becoming living organ donors. “We have to accept suffering and allow others to help us.”

“It’s been amazing, the outpouring,” said Wilson. “The power of prayer is immeasurable. The power of prayer is real.”

http://www.georgiabulletin.org/local/2010/11/25/givethanks03/

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

There’s poetry in altruism

November 25th, 2010

http://www.kidneyquest.com/kidneynews/wp-admin/post-new.php

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Kidney donor’s gift pays off at graduation

July 19th, 2010

By news-press.com • July 19, 2010

Almost five years ago The News-Press editorial cartoonist, Doug MacGregor, donated a kidney to his high school friend, John Bielefeldt.

John, 53, has a polycystic kidney disease, a genetic, incurable disease that created cysts that covered his kidneys. The News-Press wrote about their reunion and successful surgery in Jacksonville in September 2005.

One of the many reasons Doug donated his kidney was so John could live to see his oldest son graduate from high school.

That wish came true a few weeks ago.

Eric Bielefeldt, 18, graduated with honors from Creekside High School in Jacksonville, and John and Doug applauded for him side by side.

“It was a proud moment,” Doug said. “One of the greatest days for parents is to see their kid graduate.”

Doug plans to attend the high school graduation of the two younger Bielefeldt children.

John was thrilled to have Doug share the day with his family.

“He’s a great guy with huge heart,” John said. “We’ve gotten closer with this bond. It’s humbling and I am very grateful.”

John said his health continues to improve. And Doug has had no medical problems since donating his kidney.

“I would encourage anyone to consider an organ transplant, specifically a kidney,” Doug said. “It was worth every moment.”

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

« Older Entries