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Notes: Story written in 1997. Date added to Web site: 3-31-01.
Read an update on Jonathan.
The Luck of a Lifetime
by
Jonathan G. Overly
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The transplant recipient, doing well near his 13th anniversary with his transplanted kidney!
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To put it simply, I have not been, nor ever will be, so lucky. The kidney transplant I received on March 29, 1988 changed my life forever -- significantly. Even though technology is as advanced as it is today in that someone with kidney disease can live forever through dialysis, there is still a huge difference between being on dialysis and having the luck of getting a perfect match transplant!
My story begins around my sporting life, for I played soccer about ten years of it. After finishing my sophomore year at Bearden High School in Knoxville, I was looking forward to a fun summer. Well, I had one! Lots of running around with my pals, throwing frisbee and playing hacky-sack during the day and playing pool at night. (I had several friends I enjoyed playing pool with and we all thought we were pool 'sharks'.)
Well, as it always does, summer ended and it was time to start school and soccer practice again. The first few practices are always the toughest and these were no different. However, I had only practiced one or two days when something new happened to me. I left school for the day and went to the practice field and began to change clothes when I realized either one of two things had happened: either my shoes shrank since yesterday's practice or my feet had swollen somehow. My feet would literally not fit in my shoes, even completely unlaced. Before practice had a chance to start that day, it was over. I went home and told my mother about my swollen feet. I should mention here that my parents had recently divorced, and I was living with my mother, but I was not angry or hurt by their decision. It was the best decision for our family.
The next day, I told my father. In the next week, I visited several local doctors looking for some kind of answer to my situation, including my general practitioner. The first doctor had no idea. The second doctor said he recommended visiting a urologist or nephrologist. After getting a reference to see Dr. Paul Serrell, we made an appointment. On that visit, Dr. Serrell examined me and some blood was taken. I was to come back after the lab work was completed.
In a day or two, Dr. Serrell's office called and said I should return to his office for further discussion. I returned to his office with both parents and we all sat down to talk. Dr. Serrell informed us that it appeared I was experiencing renal failure through a disease called glomerular nephritis; a disease that attacks the kidneys and slowly diminishes their capacity to filter the human body's blood. The reason I had swelling is that one of the kidneys' 'responsibilities' is to remove sodium from a person's urine before it leaves the body. This once-removed sodium acts as a natural diuretic for the body by absorbing excess water. Thus, since mine had not been removing the needed sodium, I retained this excess water. This retained water gets spread throughout the body during sleep, but on awakening and a person's return to a vertical positioning, falls to the legs and feet. Since I had been wearing shoes all day, my feet did not have the chance to swell. Then suddenly I took them off to change clothes and they filled with the water, actually growing in size enough to where I could not put shoes back on.
Dr. Serrell continued saying this disease's ability to disrupt the kidneys' functioning is measured primarily in a chemical called creatinine. A typical person's creatinine should range from about 0.5 to 3.0 mg/dl (a density unit). The general course the disease runs is for a person's creatinine to increase to a point somewhere in the mid-20's at which the kidneys' functioning has diminished to an extent that they cannot live without one of two things: beginning dialysis or receiving a transplant. During the decline in kidney function, a diuretic would need to be taken to absorb the majority of the water the body is retaining. Some people's condition stalls out somewhere during the decline, and they can live a normal life with the exception of taking the diuretic. (This is what happened to my grandmother, but that is another whole story in itself.)
Since I was only in the beginning stages, there was not much we could do other than monitor it over the next few months and see exactly what course it was going to take. We briefly discussed options including one of my parents' donating a kidney or receiving a cadaver kidney. We later found out neither parent could donate for different reasons.
The months passed and my condition slowly worsened. The months turned into a year. One year turned into two years. It was quickly becoming time to discuss the options.
After approximately 2 and one half years, it was time to discuss options for the next year. My parents and I again met with Dr. Serrell to make a plan for the upcoming changes in my life. Dr. Serrell said that the usual course of action was to follow blood quality levels and begin dialysis before placing someone on the transplant waiting list. Therefore, at this point, there were not many choices.
In the fall of 1987, my condition reached the point where it was time for me to start dialysis. October 29, 1987, I began dialysis at the University of Tennessee Hospital. After several dialyzing sessions there, I moved to The Dialysis Center on Martin Mill Pike. I was fit into the Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday afternoon schedule. Imagine missing the sunlight and beautiful outdoors of Saturday afternoon for a lengthy period of time.
I was placed on the transplant waiting list soon after I began dialysis. After commuting to dialysis three days per week, I got rather used to it. Scheduling all kinds of appointments around dialysis just gives you less possible hours per week to work with. Speaking of schedules, for Christmas 1987 I was invited to join a friend's family in Florida, fishing for eight days. I went but had to schedule three dialysis sessions in Florida.
After 5 months of dialysis, I got the call. I just happened to be playing pool with a 'pool shark' friend of mine at a west Knoxville pool parlor that is, how shall I say, not known for its (clean) patrons. This establishment has one snooker table and approximately ten pool tables, lined up in the room so that five pairs of pool tables form a main row that leads to the snooker table. It was a rather strange evening already because all the pool tables were full and only the snooker table was open, so my friend and I decided to try our hand at pool on the snooker table. (It should be explained here that anyone who knows the difference between these two parlor games will know that snooker takes approximately twice the skill and dexterity of pool.) Somehow, we both were almost running the table; each of us seemed to have been temporarily given a license to kill with a pool cue, and were enacting this with great agility on the pool balls.
Well, all of a sudden, I am watching my friend shoot when I notice an oddly familiar woman walking down the aisle between the pool tables: it was my mother. (When you occasionally hang out at a place like this one, you hope you will never see your mother there.) She was coming to tell me that she had received a phone call and I had an appointment with a knife in the morning at approximately 6 AM. It was time to go. She was ecstatic. (By the way, I believe I won the majority of games that evening.) That evening, I'm not quite sure why, but I slept like a baby.
As Tuesday, March 29, 1988 began (exactly 5 months to the day from when I started dialysis), I remember ushering the day in with little nervousness and a warm smile. We went to the Hospital and the transplantation process began. It was explained to me that the operation should take about 2-3 hours and afterwards I would reside in the Hospital for a while to make sure everything was working properly. The donated kidney was a cadaver organ and the donating family did not want contact with the receiving family. It was also explained that kidneys are matched on a 6-antigen basis, where an antigen is a substance that when introduced into the body stimulates the production of an antibody. Examples of antigens are toxins, bacteria and the cells of transplanted organs. The best match is rated a 6 and the worst a 1. It has been said before that every person has an exact duplicate somewhere in the world, and will come across that person only if they are extremely lucky. I believe I encountered mine on the operating table because my match was a perfect 6.
Of course, I always have and always will honor the donating family's choice of wishing not to communicate with the receiving family, but, how wonderful it would be to share a day together and discuss the beauty of the wrong made into a right because of their simple choice. Even though they had an extremely significant loss, they created a new lease on life for someone else out of that experience.
Well, bing-bang and the surgery was over and I was waking up. After leaving surgery at approximately noon, it was 3 PM and I was conscious. The nurses checked and my kidney was functioning. Things looked really good (Thank Goodness). My mother was so happy she called all her friends that evening, including one with an interesting story. One of her best friends said she had been watching a morning news show on Monday (yesterday) and a portion of the show was about transplantation. A set of parents were discussing why they had chosen to allow their recently deceased son's organs to be donated and what was going where. They supposedly . They supposedly said that morning that one of his kidneys was to arrive in Knoxville on Tuesday and the other in Nashville on Wednesday. I later found out that I received the only transplanted kidney in Knoxville that day.
After about three weeks in the hospital, it was time to go home. The kidney was working well and the new lease on life I had been given was about to begin. Since the transplant, I have taken several different kinds of medication (e.g., immunosuppressants, blood pressure medications) on a daily basis and always will. That is just part of the process. Even though I had a great organ match, my body still knows that my third kidney is not my own and attempts to "cease and desist" all activities of foreign entities within my body. Just as all transplant recipients no matter what kind of match they get, monitoring your current state of health is an ongoing process. Several times per year I see my nephrologist, transplant coordinator and transplanting surgeon to assess my current state of health. Luckily, I have had few problems in over 8 years.
I certainly attempt to do my part, by eating a healthy diet (most of the time) and exercising as often as possible. I walk and jog, play racquetball with several different friends, own a PowerRider that I use about once per week and have a bike I enjoy riding when it doesn't need repairs. I hold eating properly and exercising on a regular basis as two of my top five priorities at all times. (Spending time with my family, work and sleep are the other three.) Without health, what have you got?
I am soon graduating from the University of Tennessee with my Masters Degree in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Science. I am currently charting a course to become a professional engineer and consultant in the energy engineering field.
In summation, I would like to say that hopefully my story highlights the benefits of organ donation and transplantation, and that I feel extremely lucky that [1] someone decided to donate their organs, [2] I was able to receive the great gift that I did and [3] there are people who can see the pricelessness of organ donation and transplantation.
Update
As of June 2001, Jonathan is still in Knoxville, and he still has his original transplant, now 13 years plus. He is now working with the University of Tennessee's Center for Clean Products and Clean Technologies, an environmental research group. He also runs his own business on the side, the Digital Design Depot, designing and building Web sites for regional businesses.
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