Kidney donation strengthens friends’ bond

[Clark]

http://www.kansas.com/2011/09/18/2022150/kidney-donation-bonds-college.html

Kidney donation strengthens friends’ bond
BY AMY RENEE LEIKER

Laughing, Michael Whitaker picked one word to describe Ashley Abedini.
“Creepy,” he joked.
“Ah, Michael,” said Abedini, 22. She grinned and nudged his knee.
“She’s quirky,” he said, softening his description. “And she’s a good friend.”
Her thoughts on Whitaker, 23, are more serious. He’s dependable, a great friend, responsible, she said, and “always like the voice of reason.”
Since 2008, the two Wichita State University students have shared a friendship. Now, after a selfless decision, they share more than laughter and jokes.
About two weeks ago, Whitaker donated a kidney to Abedini, whose own kidneys shut down in December 2010 from a lifelong disease. When Whitaker found out last fall he shared his friend’s blood type, he joked: ‘‘Well, if you ever need a kidney, let me know.”
A few weeks later, a text message chimed on his phone: Abedini had been hospitalized, it said. And the offhand comment turned into a commitment.
Linda Abedini, 53, has known for years that her daughters, Ashley and 24-year-old Allison, were sick with kidney disease. She first noticed something wrong when Allison was 1. The infant drank too much, urinated too much — “like diabetes,” Linda Abedini said.
Desperate for answers, she turned to experts. After two months, doctors diagnosed Allison with cystinosis, a rare genetic disease that causes kidney failure, usually by age 9.
Ashley was born a few months later. She had it, too.
“They’ve been on medicine their whole life,” their mother said. “That’s what’s kept them from needing a kidney.”
In 2008, doctors told Allison Abedini she would need a new kidney by age 27. Doctors said her sister would never need a transplant, she said.
Two and a half years later, Ashley Abedini’s kidneys failed.
In the Midwest, finding a matching kidney donor can take up to three years, said Mark Blackmore, living donor coordinator for Via Christi Transplant Institute where Abedini’s transplant took place.
Most organ donors are deceased. But living donors, like Whitaker, provide a quick, effective transplant for the recipient.
“You can take it across the hall to another operating room and transplant it in,” Blackmore said.
“And if a kidney worked this morning, it will probably still work this afternoon.”
Whitaker said he didn’t take the decision to donate his organ lightly. But after extensive talks with Blackmore, he shrugged off the “what-if” commenters who said he might regret giving away his kidney.
What if his future son or daughter needed the organ? they asked. “I would hope they would have a friend who’s willing,” Whitaker told them. “Her (Ashley’s) life is more impor tant now.
“Even if two or three weeks down the line it turns out her body rejects it, it still wouldn’t have felt right to me not to make the attempt.”
By July, Whitaker started tests: blood draws, urine collections, X-rays, CT scans and meetings with a social worker, psychologist and kidney specialist.
At 5 a.m. on Sept. 6, he checked into Via Christi Transplant Institute, 929 N. St. Francis, in Wichita. Seven hours later, Abedini had a new kidney.
Whitaker left the hospital on Sept. 9. Doctors released Abedini a day later.
No one knows how long the new kidney will function. Some last more than 20 years, Blackmore said. Some fail within weeks.
Settled together on a futon in Linda Abedini’s living room, the two glanced at each other. The impact of what Linda Abedini calls Whitaker’s inspirational and humbling gift has-n’t sunk in. Physically, he is now part of her, but their friendship hasn’t changed.
Ashley Abedini shrugged.
“I think we were like we were before,” she said. “I think it will strengthen us in the long run because I’ll think, ‘Wow, he’s always been there for me.’
“But it hasn’t been a dramatic thing.”
Whitaker is stoic — hunched over with his arm shielding the three incisions a surgeon made to remove his kidney. That morning, he had weaned himself off the painkillers. Sitting is most painful, he said, while sweat beaded his forehead.
“I don’t want her to feel like she owes me or anything because I gave her a kidney,” Whitaker said. “I understand it’s a big deal, but at the same time, I don’t want it to go to my head.”