Martinsville Bulletin
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Barbara Hubbard of Collinsville gave up a kidney, but she gained something far more precious in return: her sister’s life.
Doctors in Massachusetts recently removed one kidney from Hubbard, 62, and transplanted it into her sister Mary Link, 59, whose own kidneys had failed. Hubbard said the experience was “thrilling.”
“It was a pleasure, a privilege to do this for Mary,” Hubbard said. “It’s so very exciting to know she’s healthy and her body’s working.”
Decades ago, Link began taking a long-term prescription medication that had a side effect of kidney damage. It was then Hubbard offered to donate a kidney if Link needed it.
“I promised my sister about 25 years ago, if she ever needed me, I’d be there for her,” Hubbard said.
When Link’s kidneys eventually failed and it came time to make good on her promise last summer, Hubbard said, “I never hesitated a moment. How often do you get a chance to save your sister’s life?”
Link’s three sisters and their cousin volunteered to be tested to see if they were suitable donors, but because the process is so extensive, doctors started with Hubbard and only tested one person at a time.
Hubbard went through hundreds of thousands of dollars of tests, most of them at Memorial Hospital in Martinsville, because doctors “wanted to make sure I wasn’t risking my life to save Mary’s,” she said. She also met with a donor advocate to make sure she was making the decision of her own free will.
When someone donates a kidney, the recipient’s insurance pays for everything, said Barbara’s husband, Frank Hubbard.
Before she could go through with the surgery, doctors wanted Barbara Hubbard to lose weight. With her sister’s life at stake, she stayed motivated and shed 50 pounds in several months.
“I had the weight of the world on me” to succeed, Hubbard said. “I ate like I was supposed to, and I exercised on the treadmill.”
Meanwhile, Link had started on dialysis in February but “probably should’ve started it earlier,” Hubbard said.
Dialysis can be done for a maximum of seven years. If Link had remained on the transplant list for people in need of kidneys, she would have been low-priority for an organ because of her age, Frank Hubbard said.
When the time for the transplant came in June, Barbara Hubbard traveled to the University of Massachusetts Memorial Hospital, near where her sisters and mother live.
Hubbard said she never worried going into the surgery.
“My mother was panicked. She’s 94 years old and has two daughters going under the knife,” Hubbard said. Fortunately, she added, “Nothing happened. It was a perfect surgery.”
Hubbard was in the operating room for four hours, and her sister’s surgery lasted two and a half hours. Doctors did not remove Link’s original kidneys because it is safer to leave them in, so she now has three kidneys.
The donated kidney began working immediately — so well, in fact, that doctors released Link from the hospital two days earlier than anticipated. The two stayed with family in Massachusetts as they recuperated and were cared for by their older sisters, Lynnie DeHart and Susan Henke, both of Massachusetts.
Spending that time together as a family “was a gift in itself,” Hubbard said.
Hubbard also came home from the surgery with a bag of gifts the medical team presented to her on her third day in the hospital. One was a green rubber bracelet that is given only to organ donors. Green symbolizes new life, she said, and it is printed with the words “endurance,” “hope,” “courage” and “bravery.”
“I have been wearing it ever since it was put on my wrist,” Hubbard said. She also received a kidney-shaped pillow with notes written on it by the surgeon, transplant support team and Hubbard’s family, as well as a certificate saying she had saved Link’s life.
“Every one of the gifts really touched my heart,” Hubbard said. “When I asked if Mary was going to get gifts, too, I was told ‘No’ because she received the most precious gift: my kidney.”
Since the surgery, Hubbard said of her sister, “she looks alive again.” Before, “she was just dragging. She had no energy.”
Transplant surgery is more difficult for the recipient than the donor, Hubbard said. Link will be out of work two to three months from her job helping mentally challenged clients find employment. In contrast, Hubbard, a former classroom teacher who now runs a business as a reading tutor, resumed working two weeks after the surgery.
Link will take antirejection drugs for the rest of her life — which, thanks to the donated kidney, is expected be much longer.
The life expectancy for transplant patients receiving kidneys from living donors is 25 to 35 years, Hubbard said, as opposed to 10 to 15 years if the kidney came from a deceased donor.
“I think it is a shame to bury bodies filled with organs that are potentially lifesaving,” Hubbard said.
For living donors, the kidney is one organ that can be given without too much impact on the donor’s quality of life. And if something happens to Hubbard’s remaining kidney, as a donor she would “jump to the top of the transplant list,” she said.
Hubbard said she does not even notice her kidney is gone.
“I can’t even feel any difference,” she said. The only impact to her lifestyle as a result of the surgery, she said, is “I just have to watch my salt intake.”
Too much salt can cause high blood pressure and damage her remaining kidney. Hubbard also cannot take ibuprofen, “and I can’t play football,” she laughed.
But despite these minor caveats, the experience of donating a kidney “enriched my life,” Hubbard said.
“My sister Sue told me, ‘Not only did you give our sister the gift of life, you gave the whole family the gift of life, because what would we have done without Mary?’” she said.
“It wasn’t like I had to really think about it. I almost was embarrassed when people were complimenting me, because it wasn’t a decision. It’s just what siblings do.”