Surging COVID-19 doesn’t mean other ailments take a holiday. People still cope with the usual range of illness, though the pandemic tends to add complications.
Take Ed and Lisa Balcita, of Berwyn.
Ed had kidney failure from decades of diabetes. In 2017, he went on the transplant list, where he did what people do on transplant lists. He waited.
The average wait for a kidney is about four years. About 100,000 people are waiting, and each year, about 5,000 of them die waiting. Ed’s kidney function dropped to 10 percent of normal while he was on the list, waiting.
Sometimes a spouse will donate a kidney. Ed’s wife certainly wanted to.
“When the doctor told me, ‘Perhaps a living donor...’ I knew right away I was going to be tested,” said Lisa.
But she wasn’t a match. Ed’s body would reject her kidney. Nor could Lisa be part of a chain donation — where one donor gives a kidney to a second recipient, paired with a donor who isn’t a match either, and that donor gives to a third recipient, whose donor gives to another, until they reach someone who can give to the original recipient in the first pair.
Another problem: Lisa has AB blood. The rarest kind, found in 4 percent of the population.
“She’s such a rare blood type, we couldn’t find someone who needed her kidney,” said Ed. “We were on the list a long time.”
Plus Lisa had an all too common condition.
“I wasn’t approved because of my weight,” she said. “They said, ‘You need to get in better health.’”
So Lisa began seriously dieting so she could give away her kidney.
“I lost about 35 pounds,” she said. “I had borderline high blood pressure. I really watched what I ate, exercised more. I lost the weight slowly.”
Ed also lost almost 40 pounds, from 290 to 251.
The obesity epidemic has complicated the already difficult task of living kidney donation.
“It’s a big problem,” said Dr. Joseph R. Leventhal, interim chief of organ transplantation at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. “The concern is people who are morbidly obese are at risk of developing diabetes, hypertension. Patients who are overweight are usually associated with health issues that make it unwise to proceed with donation.”
The couple went to Northwestern because the hospital specializes in an uncommon procedure allowing Lisa to donate her kidney — not to a stranger, but to Ed, even though they aren’t a match.
“Northwestern has this program, where they would desensitize his blood,” said Lisa.
“What desensitization involves is treating the recipient to remove blood group anti-bodies and suppress their production around the time of transplant,” explained Leventhal. “The graft becomes resistant to those antibodies when they slowly return in the weeks following the kidney transplant. This requires the recipient to undergo more treatment, more manipulation of the immune system in the weeks following the transplant.”
Lisa was approved — on March 17. But due to COVID, the transplant was pushed back to July 17.
In July, Ed underwent his desensitization procedure.
“I had six or seven treatments before, four after,” said Ed.
Going through the procedure together kept Ed and Lisa, married 14 years, from focusing on themselves.
“I was more worried for her than for me,” said Ed, 54. “I broke down a couple of time, never about me. It was always worrying about her.”
”And I’m worrying about him,” added Lisa, 44.
Since then, having his wife’s kidney has improved his life considerably.
”I have energy,” said Ed. “I had energy the week I left the hospital. I’m feeling really good.”
What’s it like to donate a kidney?
“I just was in a lot of pain the first few days,” said Lisa, who stayed a second night in the hospital because of it. “There were no complications, just in first few weeks, when I lay down on my side, I felt my insides moving a little bit, an empty spot where my kidney was. Now everything is back. The scar is healing up.”
She does have one regret.
“The only thing I’m feeling: I feel sad I won’t be able to do it again for somebody,” she said. “I never thought I would be this happy. I was able to give him another 25 years without another worry. I’m just so overjoyed. I feel so happy.”
