KATHY STEVENS The York Dispatch
Updated: 07/31/2009 11:08:41 AM EDT
Shari Perkins holds a photo of her father, Marlin Knaub, outside her home. Perkins is donating her kidney to a police officer in Texas. (Doug Bauman photo)
They kept it quiet for weeks, never letting retired police Capt. M. Rene Lozano know what was headed his way.
But in recent days, Shari Perkins and co-conspirators Linda Mares and Kari Quinn let the cat out of the bag telling Lozano he would receive Perkins’ kidney.
Perkins’ kidney had passed muster, proved a perfect match for Lozano, a Houston resident whose Type 1 diabetes led to kidney failure.
He is one of about 55,000 people nationwide who await kidneys, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
He and Perkins check in next month at Methodist Hospital Transplant Center in Houston for the donor and transplant surgeries. Perkins will spend a few days in the hospital and up to eight weeks recovering at her York Township home.
If Lozano’s body accepts the kidney, he will spend two weeks recovering in the hospital and will remain on anti-rejection medication for the rest of his life. If the 55-year-old’s body rejects the organ, he’ll be placed back on dialysis, and the national waiting list.
But his family says divine intervention is at work and they remain faithful the operation will prove successful. They’ll know next month when Perkins, a 45-year-old wife, mother and homemaker, heads to Houston for the surgery.
A Web meeting: She encountered Lozano via Quinn’s posting on “Wish Upon a Hero,” a Web site. Quinn posted the wish after doctors told her health issues would prevent her from donating.
Quinn wrote, “He is a wonderful man that has always done everything in his power to help others whether it be providing Christmas for a needy family or giving someone his last dollar to put a smile on their face.”
Within 30 minutes of posting May 16, Perkins responded saying she would help.
Perkins soon learned that Lozano was a 30-year police veteran whose health forced retirement from the Houston Police Department. Lozano was sick through no fault of his own. He’d managed the diabetes for decades, but the disease began to take its toll on his kidneys.
His 6-foot-2-inch frame has withered since doctors put him on dialysis about six months ago. He’s had several strokes in recent months and currently is in physical therapy, said Mares, Lozano’s fiance, from her home in Houston.
Perkins, Mares and Quinn decided to keep the possible match a secret. They didn’t want him to become hopeful only to be disappointed. So they remained quiet until doctors gave the go-ahead.
Dad was donor: The women let go the secret at a Houston steakhouse in July. Mares told Lozano that Perkins was a friend from Pennsylvania.
Perkins arrived at the restaurant and delivered a card containing one of her favorite stories, about a guy who retrieved beached starfish and returned them to the ocean with the goal to save just one.
Perkins has had the same goal since her father, Marlin Perkins, died unexpectedly in 1995 of a heart attack. He was an organ donor, and inspired her to become a living donor.
Perkins told Lozano at dinner that night that she had a kidney for him if he would do her the honor of accepting, Mares said. He was quiet, thumbed through a menu to find words.
He looked at Perkins, then told her that he would hug her and jump for joy, if he could.
“I didn’t believe there were people like that in the world,” Lozano said Tuesday, speaking via telephone from his parents’ home in Houston. “She is willing to give a part of herself so I can live.”
He says he is one of the lucky ones, that there are other dialysis patients nearing death who have waited years for a kidney. Living donors decrease the wait, currently providing about one-third of about 14,000 kidneys each year.
“I call (Perkins) my guardian angel,” he said. “That’s exactly what she is.”
Doctors have assembled the surgery team for the hours-long procedure Aug. 25 .
“I don’t want accolades, I just hope our story will inspire one person to become a living donor,” Perkins said. “If that happens, then I’ve accomplished something.”
– Reach Kathy Stevens at 505-5437 or kstevens@yorkdis patch.com.
Kidney disease facts
—About 26 million American adults have chronic kidney disease
—Early detection can help prevent the progression of kidney disease to kidney failure.
—Heart disease is the major cause of death for all people with chronic kidney disease.
—High blood pressure causes chronic kidney disease, and chronic kidney disease causes high blood pressure.
—Those most at risk of kidney disease include people with diabetes, high blood pressure and family history.
—African Americans, Hispanics, Pacific Islanders, Native Americans and the elderly are at increased risk.
—Three simple tests can detect chronic kidney disease: blood pressure, urine albumin and serum creatinine.
—About 14,000 kidney transplants are performed annually; one-third of those organs come from living donors.
—About 55,000 people are listed at any given time on the national registry for kidney transplant.
—More than 3,000 die annually while awaiting kidney transplant.
—The one-year survival rate for transplant recipients is about 95 percent.
Source: The National Kidney Foundation and the U.S. Depart ment of Health and Human Serv ices. Learn more about kidney disease online at www.kidney.org.