November 24, 2004

Giving the Ultimate Gift: Organ Donation By Correne L. Morgan, editor, Fennimore Times
Kitty Wilkinson, left, received a kidney from her sister-in-law, Mary Wilki nson, at right. When you search the shelves of any department store for the perfect gift, you won't find a display marked 'vital organs.' But organ donation is the ultimate gift, the gift of life. That perfect gift is exactly what Mary Wilkinson gave her sister-in-law, Catherine "Kitty" Wilkinson, last May. Kitty, who has lived in Mount Hope her entire life and is now 63, was diagnosed with nephritis, a hereditary genetics disease that eventually causes kidney failure, when she was 23 years old. Nephritis was causing inflammation of her kidneys. Kitty said she was then told by her doctor in Dubuque that if she drank lots of water, she could maybe reverse the condition of her deteriorating kidneys, but that her case was severe enough to cause failure anyway. Her doctor also told her never to get pregnant and never to be overweight. Despite this advice, Kitty said she didn't abide by either of his rules. She has two sons, Tim, of Mount Hope, and Todd, of Prairie du Chien. Since the news of her nephritis, she has been treated in Fennimore, Madison and, most recently, at Methodist Hospital in Rochester, Minn. About one year ago, Kitty said she remembers her Rochester doctor asking if she had anybody who could donate a kidney to her. "I was there alone when he told me, but I don't think the seriousness of it hit me right away," Kitty said. "It wasn't until I got home and was telling my husband, Bill, about it that I broke down." So that was when her search began for a donor. Kitty was first put on the waiting list for a match, to find someone able to donate with her same blood type ‹ O positive. "Bill tried to donate, and although he had the same blood type as me, his kidneys weren't in good enough condition for the transplant," she said. Kitty said others who offered to donate were her brother, Russ Droessler, and her nephew, Russ Droessler, Jr., both of Patch Grove. Also, she said her granddaughter, Bobbie Jo (Wilkinson) Ledbury, wanted to donate, but she has no children and Kitty didn't want to take that chance away from her granddaughter. While waiting for the right donor to come forth, Kitty said she was talking to her sister-in-law, Mary on MSN Messenger one night when Mary asked how she could go about donating one of her kidneys. Mary thought that because she was Bill's sister, and his blood was a match, she would probably be a match too. "I told her to really think about her decision," Kitty said. "I told her it could change her life and I wanted her to know all about it before actually donating." Mary, who now lives in Arizona, said she had a friend who had donated a kidney to someone he didn't even know, and she also knew that a person could live without a kidney. So, after looking through some information Kitty sent her, she felt comfortable with the idea and knew it was definitely what she wanted to do for her sister-in-law. "I knew that you don't have to be dead to donate a kidney, and I knew that I'd be fine after the surgery, so I wanted to do it," Mary said. Although Mary said she has known her brother's wife her entire life (she lived a mile down the road from her as a child), she said she never imagined she would ever give her one of her kidneys. "She's always been very good to me," Mary said. And since Bill and Kitty were married when Mary was just eight years old, she said, "I don't know life without Kitty." And onward the donation process went from there. The first step was for Mary to notify Kitty's hospital that she wished to donate. This step wasn't too difficult; however, the most difficult part of the entire process for Mary didn't come until she had to go through three days of testing. "It made me very uncomfortable and cranky, but it really showed me how good of shape I was in," Mary remembered. "I just kept telling myself that those three days were nothing compared to what she was going through." After both women went through testing and preparation by watching informative videos, it was time for their surgeries in Rochester to begin. Mary said her surgery was laproscopic which included a five-inch-long incision in her lower abdomen area. "I went in on Friday, [May 21] and was out by Sunday afternoon, which was great, because I guess there used to be an eight-week recovery for this type of surgery," she said. Kitty's surgery was carried out in an adjoining operating room to Mary's. While Mary said both her surgery and recovery were a breeze, Kitty's resulted in a few complications. "I had to go back into surgery because my body was rejecting the new kidney," Kitty said. "The doctors tried really hard to save the kidney with anti-rejection methods." She said there was something in her blood that the doctors did not see before doing the transplant and it was causing the rejection. Also, after the transplant, Kitty had to have a biopsy of the new kidney, which is a procedure to remove a small piece of the kidney tissue to examine the kidney for response to the transplant. After the biopsy, Kitty said she hemorrhaged and "lost an awful lot of blood." She also had a stroke, a few seizures and days of blood transfusions. Things were not going well, she said, and then the doctors had to do another biopsy, which caused her to hemorrhage again. Later, Kitty learned from her granddaughter, who is a nurse practitioner, that she very nearly died. "It was so awful; I ended up in the intensive care unit three or four different times while I was in the hospital," Kitty said. "But my family was so wonderful. Bill has been a saint; he was there every night and would never leave my side." Six weeks after all the trauma Kitty went through, on July 16, she was finally able to go home. She said she was walking well with a walker at that time, surprisingly. "But I couldn't talk without getting out of breath, so it was hard when people would call and want to ask me how I was doing." Since then she has been on the road to recovery, which she said has been going fairly well. "The doctors are giving me hope for a full recovery, but they say I'm not out of the woods yet; they say it may be a full year though before I can get back to normal," she added. Kitty said the doctors told her that her other kidney is still working some and that the new kidney is getting lots of good blood flow. Kitty had to go in for another biopsy earlier this fall. Her doctors had hoped to avoid it after the very serious complications she suffered after the first one, but they could not. "It was scary, but they were very good," " said Kitty, referring to her doctors. The gave her blood for four hours after the procedure to ensure that if she did start bleeding she would not lose so much blood as she did before. Thankfully, the procedure was successful, and Kitty came through it well. Last week she was busy cooking up hamburger for family and friends who would be coming to their home for deer hunting. "I feel really good," Kitty said, even though she is still weak and anxious to be taking fewer medications. "I'm coming [along]. When I look back three months, I know I've come a long way," she added.