The Miracle of Life: How One Woman Turned Tragedy into the Ultimate Gift

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The Miracle of Life: How One Woman Turned Tragedy into the Ultimate Gift
PARADE MAGAZINE
KATE BRAESTRUP DECEMBER 24, 2011   

In the winter of 2010, Deb Shearer, then a healthy 45-year-old mother of three, flew from her home near Jacksonville, Fla., to Birmingham, Ala. There, in a surgical procedure known as a nephrectomy, one of Deb’s kidneys was snipped from its moorings, placed in a pan of cool saltwater, and carried across the hallway, where it was grafted into the body of a woman Deb had never laid eyes on. The transplant took place almost exactly four years after the death of Deb’s son George. He was 22 years old. “I loved my son,” says Deb, a coordinator for the PGA Tour. “He inspired me to make a difference.” The power of that inspiration not only led to the transplant but also set in motion a remarkable ripple of compassion that would change the lives of six families. 

Nearly 60 years after the first successful kidney transplant, the procedure still represents a pretty spiffy bit of surgical wizardry, but science alone can’t make a miracle happen — for that, you need a healthy dose of generosity and love, and one ordinary person doing an extraordinary thing. Deb didn’t expect to become part of an altruistic donor chain. “I just thought it would help my family heal,” she says. “And I thought I was going to be doing something for one person, not a dozen!”   

In a little less than two years, George’s Chain of Life, as it has become known, has brought together people from all walks of life. Six kidney recipients — Rosa Sanders, Fielding Daniel, Carolyn Murdock, Samir Karadsheh, Alan West, and Linda Benson — were each offered new life by six strangers who thereby became kin. This is their story.

What Is a Living Donor Chain?

A Son Named George
Allowing the Department of Motor Vehicles to affix an organ donor sticker to your driver’s license is fairly painless. But donating a kidney, especially to a total stranger, while you’re still using it is something else entirely.

Deb knew more about medical risks than most. She and her husband, Tyler, had watched, helpless, as their son George, who’d survived a serious car accident, succumbed not to his original injuries but to overwhelming infection. He died in the ICU minutes before being taken to surgery.

“I was petrified,” admits Deb, who decided to become a donor once she discovered that George — whom she describes as an animated young man known for his sense of humor and “ability to make everyone around him feel special” — had wanted to be one but couldn’t because of the state of his organs at the time of his death. “My husband had a lot of hesitation about letting me do this, and my other kids were really afraid,” she says. After such a traumatic loss, what could possibly motivate her to place herself in the hands of any doctor? “After the accident, George asked me if he was going to die. I told him, ‘Absolutely not; I am going to take care of you,’” says Deb. “When he died, I was so consumed with guilt and anger. I realized that I could either continue along that path, or I could fulfill my promise to my son, but in a much different way.”

A Bit About Kidneys
A healthy human comes into the world with two kidneys, fist-size organs whose functions include regulating the body’s fluid levels, maintaining the proper acid-base balance in the blood, and rinsing away metabolic waste. 

Kidney failure, which can be caused by conditions ranging from infection to diabetes to injury, affects 485,000 people in this country, killing more than 70,000 every year. The vast majority of those who survive do so by chaining themselves to a grueling, painful treatment known as hemodialysis (or simply dialysis), which requires being hooked up to a machine that filters waste from the blood for hours at a time. Still, thanks to dialysis, the parents, siblings, spouses, and friends of those receiving the treatment can put off grieving, at least for a while. The patient has no choice but to endure it until a flesh-and-blood kidney becomes available for transplant — a wait typically lasting five years, which is also when the odds of survival on dialysis begin to drop dramatically. 

A New Danger to Kidneys

A successful kidney transplant is a tricky thing. Although it is relatively safe as surgeries go, it is still a major procedure performed under general anesthesia, with all the attendant risks: damage to adjoining organs, hemorrhage, adverse reactions to anesthesia, and infection.

It’s also not quite as simple as taking a diseased organ out of one body and replacing it with a healthy one from another. The donor and the recipient have to share certain precise characteristics; otherwise, the new organ could trigger the recipient’s immune system to launch a war against it. This is why patients often spend so long on transplant waiting lists. And though a kidney can come from a recently deceased donor across the country, one from a living donor is preferred, in part because the organ is a whole lot fresher. In Deb’s case, it was mere moments and a short walk down a hallway before one of her kidneys was placed into the already prepped body of a gravely ill woman named Rosa Sanders.

The First Link
Rosa’s kidneys had failed due to high blood pressure, a problem that ran in her family — her father died of kidney failure in his 40s. In a vicious bit of catch-22, the demands of dialysis treatment meant that Rosa, 51, of Sawyerville, Ala., was no longer able to work as a loom operator. Without the health insurance coverage her job provided, she struggled to manage her condition. “I could no longer afford to get dialysis done at the hospital, so I took classes so I could administer it to myself,” says Rosa.

Meet the Girl Who Couldn't Eat

She desperately needed a kidney. Her daughter Shalisa Sanders, 31, a research assistant at the University of Alabama, was willing to give one of hers, but she proved incompatible. Nevertheless, Shalisa decided to register herself and Rosa with the Alliance for Paired Donation, which matches potential donors and recipients. 

As it turned out, Shalisa’s kidney was exactly right for a 50-year-old father of three from Rocky Mount, N.C., named Fielding Daniel, whose organs had failed as the result of a disorder known as Berger’s Disease. Upon hearing they had been matched, Shalisa agreed to help this stranger, an act of generosity duplicated by Fielding’s wife, Amy. Amy Daniel, 50, had proved to be a poor match for her husband, so even before his transplant she donated a kidney to Carolyn Murdock, also found through the Alliance for Paired Donation. “When I met Carolyn after the surgery, I saw the look of relief on her face because she didn’t have to go through another day of dialysis. When I came home, I said to Fielding, ‘Oh, honey, you’re going to feel so good again.’”

Carolyn, who lives in Elk Grove, Calif., has since resumed her former life, working at UC Davis as an administrative assistant, teaching Sunday school, and playing tennis. The 54-year-old admits her guardian angel turned out to be different from what she’d pictured. “I am black, and I was surprised to find out afterwards that Amy was not my race,” she says. “It’s exciting to imagine that there is one blood running through all of us.”

The Chain Grows Longer
By “all of us,” Carolyn means more than just herself, Fielding, and Rosa. Carolyn’s husband, Gerry Murdock, volunteered his kidney, too, which wound up being transplanted into a man named Samir Karadsheh. Born in Jordan, Samir came to the U.S. in the 1960s and eventually opened a restaurant in Grand Rapids, Mich. After a trip to Amman in 2009, he was diagnosed with a bacterial infection that led to kidney failure. He was in a coma for three days, and when he awoke, he began dialysis.

“I couldn’t bear the treatment,” says Samir, who lost his business due to his illness. “I felt sick all the time; I could barely leave my home. I couldn’t live like that.” Samir’s wife, Raeda, was powerless to help — she’d had a cancerous polyp and was not eligible to donate. Neither were six other friends and relatives. So Samir was in limbo, waiting for a kidney, until Gerry, 54, a structural engineer, stepped in; this prompted Samir’s sister, Suhad Shatara, 65, a saleswoman at JC Penney in Grand Rapids, to donate as well. Her kidney was found to be a match for Alan West, 65, an insurance executive from Grand Rapids who was in the final stage of kidney disease and in dire need of a transplant. “He was in so much pain,” says Alan’s wife, Barb, 65. “After the transplant, it was like he was reborn.”

How You Can Lend a Hand This Holiday

Barb then gave a kidney to Linda Benson, 63, a retired cosmetology teacher and beauty salon owner from Tusayan, Ariz., who was born with only one fully formed organ.

Six donors, six recipients, in a chain that will hopefully keep growing as compassion meets luck and perhaps something more divinely inspired. “I was praying to meet [my] donor in person,” Linda confesses, “but I was told that we couldn’t meet until after the surgery, and then only if the donor also consented.”

As it turned out, that donor, Barb, was waiting by the hospital elevator when she saw a woman enter the lobby; she had first noticed her in the parking lot. Having spent so much time with her husband during his illness, she easily recognized the characteristic look and hobbled gait of a dialysis patient. The woman’s eyes met Barb’s. “I’m having surgery today,” she explained. “I’m here to get a kidney.”

“I know,” said Barb. “I’m here to give a kidney.”

The Strength of Their Bond
Though they had the right to refuse, each of the six pairs of donors and recipients in George’s Chain have met each other, perhaps the most meaningful part of this story. “It was like two friends meeting,” Carolyn says of seeing her donor, Amy Daniel, for the first time. “She said, ‘Now you take care of that kidney.’ I felt like she was doing this just for me.” That those who have received kidneys are grateful to the donors seems only natural. What is perhaps surprising is how much gratitude the donors experience. “Living donation gave me an opportunity to feel helpful at a time when I felt so helpless,” Amy says. “It’s so powerful, immediate, and joyful.”

Equally powerful is the feeling that George is present in all their lives. In fact, at the PARADE cover shoot, which took place on 11/11/11, a special moment came when the clock struck 11:11. “George used to always say, ‘It’s 11:11 — make a wish,’” says Deb. “At that moment, I got chills because I could just feel him all around us.” And though she no longer has her son, Deb knows that his generous spirit lives on through the chain he has inspired. “Every time I hear about a new person who gets a kidney, I feel a huge hug from George.”

Kate Braestrup is the author of Marriage and Other Acts of Charity.

Has organ donation touched your life? Share your experience in the comments below.

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