Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest.
Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.
—O. Henry, “The Gift of the Magi”
Knowing his father’s first transplanted kidney would eventually need to be replaced, Bob, a real estate developer from Utah, always expected he might be called upon to donate one of his. But he and the 70 other friends and relatives who applied to be tested as potential kidney donors were not a match for his father, Buzz, whose kidney function was deteriorating rapidly.
After requesting their records be transferred from another transplant facility, Buzz and Bob met with kidney surgeon, Dr. Adam Bingaman, at Texas Transplant Institute** in San Antonio, Texas, where they had been referred by Buzz’snephrologist. As Director of the Living Donor Kidney Transplant Program, the largest in the United States, Dr. Bingaman was very optimistic that their extensive database of incompatible donor and recipient pairs would soon provide a match for the father and son.
These words came to Suzette in prayer at an evening church service when the service was abruptly halted to announce that the sister of a fellow congregant was in hospital and critically ill. Wanting to help but worried about intruding in the family’s business, Suzette prayed for the young woman who, she would later learn, needed a kidney transplant.
“Find a kidney for Kashla.”
Suzette continued to seek spiritual guidance. Then, with the family’s blessing, Suzette and Kashla’s family organized an educational seminar at their church for people to meet Kashla and learn more about kidney transplantation. Before the meeting, Suzette was tested to see if she might be a match—if only to show others how simple the process was. Suzette was devastated by the poor turnout at the seminar. “I just wept when I got home. Kashla was walking dead—she was so sick. And I asked, ‘Lord, do they not see how sick she is?’”
Thirty-six-year-old Kelley, wife, mother of three young boys and fitness buff, was doing the first sit-up with her personal trainer on a Thursday evening when she noticed some discomfort in her chest. On Friday, in some pain, Kelley attended parent-teacher conferences. Early Saturday morning she awoke with severe pain in her chest and arms. Kelley, who rarely took medicine, asked her husband, Darren, to bring her some Tylenol. Not able to find any (there were six bottles of it in the house at the time) Darren brought her aspirin. By Monday morning when Kelley went outside to kiss the boys good-bye as they left for school, the cold air triggered another bout of severe chest pain and she went back to bed. When Darren swung by the house later to check on Kelley, he found her still in bed and white as a sheet.
Kashla was just 29 years old when she faced kidney failure for the second time. Her transplanted kidney had lasted 17 years, but now—on dialysis, tired, unable to work full time, dealing with infections, hospitalizations and blood transfusions, Kashla learns about the Live Donor Kidney Transplant Program at Texas Transplant Institute** from the staff at the dialysis clinic.
Her parents, Leonard and Judy, and older brother, Torrance, were willing but unsuitable donors because of their high blood pressure. Torrance had a friend at their church, Suzette, who volunteered to donate her kidney but she wasn’t a match.
Imagine you desperately need a kidney transplant. You spend four hours a day, three days a week for five months on dialysis. And you’ve got multiple family members and friends who want to donate a kidney, but no one is a match.
That’s exactly what happened to 62-year-old Buzz, a successful entrepreneur from Utah on assignment in San Antonio for three years, who received his first kidney transplant at age 29. That kidney started to fail in May 2009 after 32 years. (Most kidneys from living donors last 15-20 years).
When Laura was 30 weeks pregnant with her fourth child she ran into Dr. Mahendra Patel whom she had met eight years earlier. His parting words on this day were to not hesitate to call if she ever needed him. Laura would have no idea how soon their paths would cross again.
In 1998, Dr. Patel, a pediatric hematologist/oncologist at Methodist Children's Hospital*had been involved in the care of Maegan, Laura’s daughter who had died of multi-organ failure resulting from a mysterious illness at just 10 months old. At autopsy, Maegan was diagnosed with HLH—hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis—a rare immune disorder that was not well understood at the time.
“Two weeks after I ran into Dr. Patel they were wheeling me in for a C-section and I said we need to call him. It was a déjà vu labor,” says Laura. Juliana was born with the same symptoms and same blood counts as Maegan. “The next thing we knew Dr. Patel was there, he made the diagnosis of HLH right away and put Juliana on the transplant list immediately.” By this time—2007—advances in the understanding of HLH meant a stem cell transplant was the only known cure for her baby.
It’s not uncommon for teenagers to stay up all night playing video games or surfing the internet. But that’s not why 15-year-old John Michael wouldn’t go to sleep: he was just afraid he might never wake up.
John Michael had been a linebacker for the Hondo Owls football team and was in training during the off-season when he developed flu-like symptoms. At first, his symptoms were dismissed as a cold or allergies.
When John Michael failed to improve, however, doctors at Methodist Hospital* in San Antonio, Texas, discovered his heart was functioning at only ten to fifteen percent. John Michael had a rare form of heart disease known as non-compaction of the left ventricle–a condition he had been born with, but does not typically result in symptoms until later in life. That condition can leave the heart too weak to supply blood to the rest of his body.
Despite a strong family history of kidney disease, Larry, 64 a retired United States Air Force Major General, was totally unprepared to learn his kidneys were suddenly failing. He figured at his age it had passed him by. His nephrologist, Dr. Lynda Szeczech, Associate Professor of Medicine at Duke University Medical Center and President of the National Kidney Foundation, had been following Larry closely and suggested he consider a transplant from a living donor. Larry initially preferred being added to the waiting list for a kidney from a deceased donor—as his brother had done 17 years earlier. “I would have done a cadaver transplant. I didn’t want to put anyone at risk,” Larry says.
His devoted wife, Anne, a registered nurse and medical/technical writer, had another idea: she wanted to donate her kidney. “She told me that we’re in it together and anything that happens to me happens to her,” Larry says. Although her kidney wouldn’t be a match for her husband’s, Anne was undaunted.
When Giovanni was born, he was two months premature, had cysts on his brain and his lungs were not fully developed. Three days later his parents learned his kidneys were failing.
“Although kidney failure didn’t sound great, we didn’t think that was the worst thing he could have relative to his other problems,” Giovanni’s mother, Michelle, says.
But by the time he was just 14 months old, Giovanni needed a kidney transplant. No one could have predicted then that after years of unlikely events and near tragedies, he would receive a second kidney from an unknown living donor in San Antonio, thanks to the Texas Transplant Institute**’s Incompatible Live Kidney Donor Exchange Program—the largest living donor kidney transplant program in the United States.
During lunch one day in the cafeteria, Gary, a San Antonio bus driver, started coughing. He thought he was choking on a piece of chicken. Then, after another bad coughing spell—this time while he was driving—he went to the Emergency Room where he was shocked to discover he had congestive heart failure.
Gary was referred to Dr. Michael Kwan, a board-certified heart failure and transplant cardiologist with Texas Transplant Physician Group. Gary received an external defibrillator and intravenous medication to help improve his heart’s contractions. “Aside from the defibrillator going off accidentally a couple times, I was feeling fine,” Gary says.
Rick, 62, says those two words are probably harder to hear than “you have cancer.”
After getting chemotherapy for stage IV follicular lymphoma at Southwest Texas Regional Cancer Center (now Texas Oncology) in Austin, Texas, Rick thought he had beaten his cancer. But while on vacation and getting ready to go to a party he got the dreaded call from his oncologist.
More chemotherapy in Austin and at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, following Rick’s cancer recurrence wasn’t as successful as everyone hoped and his doctors told him there was “one magic bullet left”—a stem cell transplant.
Tom, 50, is a lot of things: a devoted husband, doting father, Army First Sergeant, world traveler, and somewhat accident-prone weekend warrior. But he never imagined he would also some day be called “heart transplant survivor”.
Just six short years ago, a fall off his bicycle while stationed in Germany would change Tom’s life forever. When his face hit the pavement and he broke a tooth, the resulting root canal would trigger a series of events that would ultimately require a heart transplant to save Tom’s life.
Lejos estaba Leticia de imaginar que a sus 50 años, su vida cambiaría de un día para otro.
Sin tener ningún antecedente de leucemia en su familia, ella se sentía mal, decaída y sin ganas de levantarse de la cama. Así que decidió ir al médico quien determinó que tenía anemia y necesitaba transfusiones de sangre. Sin embargo, Leticia seguía sintiéndose mal y fue a ver dos hematólogos en México. Uno de ellos, le diagnosticó mielodisplasia y le aseguró que iba a vivir muchos años pero que no había cura ni trasplantes para personas de su edad. El segundo hematólogo le hizo una biopsia y le dijo que padecía leucemia. Leticia, temerosa y sin saber qué más hacer, buscó soluciones en la medicina alternativa pero no encontró los resultados que esperaba.
Avid hiker and marathon walker, Bill, 59, knows a lot about overcoming obstacles and testing his endurance. But when his illness required him to get two or three blood transfusions every month, he had to accept his limitations. It meant cutting short his cherished backpacking adventures or waiting alone at base camp while his buddies climbed to the summit without him.
But, today, just two years after a stem cell transplant, Bill is back on track—training for the Austin half marathon, planning a trip to Moscow in June for his daughter’s wedding and organizing a hiking trip to the Grand Canyon this fall.
In June 2007, at just three weeks old, William broke out in a rash covering his face, arms and legs. It was eventually diagnosed as Sweet syndrome or acute febrile neutrophilic dermatosis—a skin disorder that’s very rare in newborns and usually associated with some kind of cancer, although there didn’t seem to be any sign of cancer at that time.
After about 18 months of doctors’ visits, hospitalizations and symptoms that confounded and frustrated everyone, William was finally diagnosed with JMML—Juvenile Myelomonocytic Leukemia and referred to the Pediatric Bone and Marrow Stem Cell Transplant Program at Texas Transplant Institute** at Methodist Children's Hospital of South Texas* in San Antonio.
Seeing her, beautifully poised, manicured and smiling, it’s hard to imagine everything Reesa has been through. You can see small bruises on her neck, chest and hands, but Reesa looks strong and stoic in spite of it all.
After receiving abnormal blood results from lab tests for the cholesterol medication she was taking, Reesa was seen by Dr. David Friedman, a San Antonio hematologist/oncologist and family friend. She was diagnosed with leukemia and eventually entered into a clinical trial of clofarabine at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas.
In isolation and a state of shock, Reesa says she still can’t believe it all happened. “I got one week of treatment and three weeks of observation where only doctors were allowed in the room,” Reesa says. “But once I found out I could get the clofarabine in San Antonio, there was no way I was going back to Houston.” She received six more rounds of treatment in San Antonio before she entered remission that lasted two years.
Jeanne and her family have recently been communicating with Jeanne’s bone marrow donor, a young man from Germany who is scheduled to travel to Texas in September, 2011. Stay tuned for more updates when Jeanne and her donor meet later this summer.
To hear Jeanne’s mom, Donaji, tell it you’d almost think her young daughter’s leukemia and subsequent bone marrow transplant were a normal part of childhood.
From the time Donaji noticed Jeanne’s leg was bothering her in June 2008 to a diagnosis of acute myelogenous leukemia, or AML, to a bone marrow transplant in early November 2008 just weeks before Jeanne’s third birthday, the process went pretty much by the book.
Being African-American and having type AB positive blood, Ray knew that finding a bone marrow donor match to treat his non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Ray is an Agent Orange survivor from the Vietnam War.
When Ray experienced his third NHL relapse in 2007 after numerous treatments, including an autologous bone marrow transplant, he was referred to Dr. Paul Shaughnessy, a bone marrow transplant physician with Texas Transplant Physician Group in San Antonio. After examining his options, Dr. Shaughnessy scheduled Ray for a transplant using donated umbilical cord blood.
Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest.
Thirty-six-year-old Kelley, wife, mother of three young boys and fitness buff, was doing the first sit-up with her personal trainer on a Thursday evening when she noticed some discomfort in her chest. On Friday, in some pain, Kelley attended parent-teacher conferences. Early Saturday morning she awoke with severe pain in her chest and arms. Kelley, who rarely took medicine, asked her husband, Darren, to bring her some Tylenol. Not able to find any (there were six bottles of it in the house at the time) Darren brought her aspirin. By Monday morning when Kelley went outside to kiss the boys good-bye as they left for school, the cold air triggered another bout of severe chest pain and she went back to bed. When Darren swung by the house later to check on Kelley, he found her still in bed and white as a sheet.
Despite a strong family history of kidney disease, Larry, 64 a retired United States Air Force Major General, was totally unprepared to learn his kidneys were suddenly failing. He figured at his age it had passed him by. His nephrologist, Dr. Lynda Szeczech, Associate Professor of Medicine at Duke University Medical Center and President of the National Kidney Foundation, had been following Larry closely and suggested he consider a transplant from a living donor. Larry initially preferred being added to the waiting list for a kidney from a deceased donor—as his brother had done 17 years earlier. “I would have done a cadaver transplant. I didn’t want to put anyone at risk,” Larry says. 
“It’s back.”
Tom, 50, is a lot of things: a devoted husband, doting father, Army First Sergeant, world traveler, and somewhat accident-prone weekend warrior. But he never imagined he would also some day be called “heart transplant survivor”.
Avid hiker and marathon walker, Bill, 59, knows a lot about overcoming obstacles and testing his endurance. But when his illness required him to get two or three blood transfusions every month, he had to accept his limitations. It meant cutting short his cherished backpacking adventures or waiting alone at base camp while his buddies climbed to the summit without him.
Seeing her, beautifully poised, manicured and smiling, it’s hard to imagine everything Reesa has been through. You can see small bruises on her neck, chest and hands, but Reesa looks strong and stoic in spite of it all.
Jeanne and her family have recently been communicating with Jeanne’s bone marrow donor, a young man from Germany who is scheduled to travel to Texas in September, 2011. Stay tuned for more updates when Jeanne and her donor meet later this summer.
Being African-American and having type AB positive blood, Ray knew that finding a bone marrow donor match to treat his non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Ray is an Agent Orange survivor from the Vietnam War.
