N.J. kidney donor in Rose Parade. At 72, thought to be oldest non-directed donor

[Clark]

http://www.nj.com/healthfit/index.ssf/2015/01/nj_kidney_donor_featured_in_rose_bowl_parade_meets_recipient_its_powerful_overwhelming.html

N.J. kidney donor in Rose Bowl Parade, meets recipient: 'It's powerful, overwhelming'
By Kathleen O'Brien

Out in California to participate in the Rose Bowl parade, Reenie Harris was thrilled to see that organ recipient Frank Diaz was doing so well.

“His kidney is functioning perfectly,” she reported, pleased as punch.

Her wording is telling: “his” kidney. That’s because just 17 months ago, that kidney was hers.

Harris, now 72, gained the distinction of being the oldest live kidney donor, according to the National Organ Donor Registry, when she decided in 2013 to be a so-called “altruistic” donor – someone who donates an organ to a stranger. She was following the footsteps of her daughter, Natasha Kruse, who had also donated a kidney a few years earlier.

The two were invited to walk in the Rose Bowl Parade today along the Donate Life float, which celebrates organ donation and memorializes the lives of deceased donors.

The trip gave the Cedar Knolls woman the opportunity to meet the recipient of her kidney – an experience that she said has left her alternately floating on air, choked with emotion, or unapologetically speechless.

“I’ve been catapulted into another dimension,” she said.

When donor and recipient met for the first time earlier this week at a restaurant near Diaz’s home in Burbank, Harris was seated right next to the man who had received her kidney in May of 2013. She briefly noticed that when either of them leaned in to speak, their torsos were aligned so that the kidney now in his body was just inches from its former home in her body.

Yet her wording proves she now longer sees it as “her” kidney – and in fact, never did.

“It’s his! It’s his!,” she insisted, when her choice of words was pointed out. “I never considered I had ownership of it.”

Since her donation, Harris has become active in the organ-sharing community as a volunteer, and as part of that effort, was invited to participate in the Rose Bowl Parade.

She’d heard through the grapevine earlier that her recipient was doing well, but faced with an impeding visit to the West Coast, she sent him a letter via Saint Barnabas Medical Center, where she had her surgery.

Shortly after that, she got a call on her cellphone on a quiet Sunday afternoon. It was Diaz, apologetic that he hadn’t reached out earlier. She told him, “No, it wasn’t the right time then.”

Timing is crucial when setting up a meeting between donors and recipients, said Marie Morgievich, director of Barnabas’ Clinical Services and Living Donor Institute.

Even if donor and recipient live locally, they aren’t usually allowed to meet before surgery, she said. That’s because the staff wants to avoid a situation in which the donor makes a snap judgment about the recipient based on appearances alone.

“Immediately post-operatively is not the right time to meet either. If you meet right away, you’re not really focused on the meeting, so it takes some of the joy out of it,” she said.

The hospital usually broaches the possibility of a meeting about two months after the transplant. It takes place only if both parties agree.

In Harris’ case, she and Diaz agreed to meet at a restaurant the weekend before the parade. Little did she know he’d be bringing along 15 relatives: spouse, children, grandchildren, and three older sisters.

At the time of her donation, Harris said she had learned that age itself is no barrier to donation. If both the person and the kidney are healthy enough, doctors will likely approve a transplant.

There is one caveat for older donors, however: Their organ usually goes to an older recipient.

In Diaz’s case, it went to a man, then 64, who had been on dialysis for five long years as he awaited a transplant. Once part of a very active family, he’d had to curtail his activities drastically, as had his wife, Harris said. (Diaz didn’t want to be interviewed, but didn’t mind being identified as an organ recipient, Harris said.)

Meeting the entire family put his life – and the importance of the donated kidney – into a far wider perspective than she’d imagined. Diaz is now up and about, free from dialysis, breathing better and sleeping better. His newfound health has been a joy to his large, extended family.

Seeing the expanding pool of happiness brought about by a single organ donation went far beyond anything Harris had expected, she said.

“It’s difficult to put into words. It’s powerful, overwhelming,” she said, choking up as she was preparing to leave her California hotel room to decorate the Donate Life float with her daughter.

“To think that life can be put in a box, shipped across the country, and can alter an entire life….and an entire family…” she said. “I’m going to cry. This is so much bigger than I am. I know this was a gift I was given. I treasure the wellness I was given.”

Harris and her daughter spent an entire day decorating the elaborate Donate Life float, which includes 72 portraits done in flowers and seeds of some deceased organ donors.

They include four people with ties to New Jersey, according to the NJ Sharing Network:

— Melissa Mercado of Paterson was six weeks old when she died in an automobile accident. Her kidneys saved the life of a young mother and her heart saved the life of a baby boy. Her family will be in the grandstand at the parade.

— Joe D’Addio, of Stirling, who saved and enhanced the lives of more than 80 people when his organs and tissue were donated in 2009.

— Anthony Rizzo, of Staten Island, died at 16; His mother volunteers with NJ Sharing Network.

— Riley Kogen of Livingston, was five when she died, allowing two people to receive vital organs.

Riding in the float among organ recipients will be Joe DiSanto, a Hillsborough resident and student at Monmouth University, who received a transplanted heart.

Not all recipients are willing to meet their donors. To some, it can be overwhelming, leaving them unable to come up with a way to express thanks, said Morgievich.

There have been cases where the donor sends a letter to the anonymous recipient, then never hears anything back. “I’ve heard recipients say, ‘I don’t know how to thank someone for that gift,’” she said.

The opposite proved true for Harris, who was thanked many times over by Diaz’s happy and grateful relatives. They’ve embraced her as part of their clan now, she reported, telling her, ‘Frank has your kidney, so you are now family.’”