Gift of kidney 'just felt right'

Guide will trek mountains again, thanks to wife

By Bill Scanlon, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published December 15, 2007 at 12:30 a.m.

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This is a Christmas story about a world-class mountain guide and the woman who led him to safety.

The woman is his wife, and on Friday, she and a medical team at Porter Adventist Hospital delivered a gift she determined months ago he would have: her kidney.

When Joe Thompson, 32, a fitness fanatic, found that his kidneys were about to fail, he put his name on the organ donor list, redoubled his efforts to eat well, and waited.

Meanwhile, his wife, Susan, also 32, started asking the question: Since she was healthy and shared his O-positive blood type, why wouldn't she be a match?

Traditionally, people in need of an organ would lean on blood relatives and friends. More commonly, they waited for a stranger to die, someone who had a matching kidney.

But it became clear that patients who received kidneys from live donors fared better than those who received them from cadavers, no matter how carefully the organ was preserved in ice or how close the match.

With improvements in anti- rejection drugs, the field of potential donors widened.

So, Susan leaned on Joe, did more research, and found a Swedish study that showed kidney donors live about 10 years longer than the general population. (The reason, it turns out, may be that only very healthy people donate kidneys in the first place).

"It was an easy decision," Susan said. "It just felt right."

Not for Joe.

Even though he makes a living taking clients on mountain treks around the globe, he at first refused to put his wife in harm's way.

But the more the Erie couple looked at the advancements in transplants, and read how well the donor usually healed, the more they thought, "Why not?"

Susan and Joe had two matching antigens - substances that stimulate immune responses - a rarity among spouses, and that settled it.

Dialysis no hindrance

As his kidneys got weaker, Joe's diet took a nose dive. He had to start eating white rice, white sugar, white flour and sugary cereals - "a whole non- nutritional diet" - because his kidneys could not process the nutrients in wholesome foods.

Last spring, Joe started dialysis. He skied the day before, the day of and the day after his first treatment.

Two days before his surgery Friday, he was "cutting tracks on the back side of Eldora," Susan said. "None of his friends could keep up with him."

Joe is one of about 200 guides to receive the American Mountain Guide Association's highest certification, and Susan shares his passion for adventure.

"I'll get to travel around with my husband again," she said.

On Friday, they awoke early and drove together to the hospital in Denver.

In the prep room, Susan joked that along with her kidney, Joe would also get her "cell memory," and it would make him love dressing up in costume for Halloween as much as she does.

Joe's observation: "Of course, I'll be doing the dishes for the rest of my life. I owe her big time."

Then he became serious. "For Susan to give me this opportunity, a second chance, the gift of life . . . it's indescribable. It means everything in the world to me."

Five hours of surgery

Susan was just an hour and a half ahead of Joe on the operating room schedule.

A last, tender kiss and Susan was wheeled off.

Susan's surgeon, Dr. Warren Kortz, used a laparoscopic procedure to make four dime-size holes in her abdomen: one for a camera and three for instruments.

Kortz then went to the DaVinci robotic surgery machine. The machine, which looks like a flight simulator, allowed him to manipulate the three instruments with a high degree of precision and control and extract the kidney, while surgeon's assistants standing next to Susan kept the camera on target and in focus.

Meantime, Joe was being anesthetized for his more traditional surgery, led by Dr. Ben Vernon.

Five hours later, Susan had a few tiny incision souvenirs. Joe had a larger wound but also Susan's healthy kidney.

"Everything went perfectly - it couldn't have gone any better," said Porter spokeswoman Rachel Robinson.

Susan's brother, Lonny Ludwig, spent the day apprehensive, happy and awestruck by the process.

"Some people go through their whole lives and never see what real love looks like," Ludwig said.

"This is what it looks like."

scanlon@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-442-8729

Facts on kidney and organ transplants

* 95,000 people are waiting for an organ.

* Every day, 17 people die while waiting for a transplant.

* Last year, organs were taken from 14,754 donors in the United States.

* Median survival rate of first transplanted kidney: 12 years

* 25 percent of transplanted kidneys are still working after 25 years.

* 17,092 kidneys were transplanted in 2006.

* 10,659 were cadaveric donors, a small increase over 2004.

* 6,372 were living donors, a small decrease from two years previous.

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