'Medical miracle': Kidney transplant has lasted 40 years and going strong
Credit: LAUREN CARROLL/JOURNAL
Published: May 29, 2011
When Jack Young's kidneys began failing at age 17 in 1967, he became convinced he was living on borrowed time.
Even after being told in 1971 he was eligible for a kidney transplant from his sister, Sharon — only the third ever planned at N.C. Baptist Hospital — Young didn't take the opportunity "all that seriously," even though it represented ending the ordeal of eight hours of dialysis twice a week.
All that Young, a West Jefferson resident, knew of organ transplants was that they were painful and likely wouldn't extend the recipient's life by more than a few months.
So even though his sister was a near-perfect match, he risked his preparation by sneaking out of the hospital for a banana split — a dietary no-no for someone on dialysis. It delayed the surgery for two weeks.
"I had been going to the church chapel to think about the decision, to think about living and dying," Young said. "When they took me back for surgery, I wasn't sure I would make it. I was just so sick that I wanted it over with one way or another.
"But I determined that since there were so many people pulling for me," including fund-raising events by a local radio station and his college fraternity, "that I had to see it through."
On Friday, Young and his family will celebrate what Wake Forest Baptist physicians call a medical miracle — living 40 years with a transplanted kidney still functioning normally. A community event of more than 150 people will take place June 5.
Although the National Kidney Foundation does not track longevity among kidney transplant recipients, officials said Young is likely among the longest living survivors in the country. The first kidney transplants were done in the 1950s.
"Jack's kidney function is better now than it was when I first began to see him 2½ years ago," said Dr. Scott Satko, who oversees Young's care at Wake Forest Baptist as an internist specializing in nephrology.
200 transplants a year
Satko said the average transplanted kidney functions for about 10 years, although he cautioned "every patient is different."
A group of four Wake Forest Baptist transplant surgeons performs more than 200 kidney transplants combined on an annual basis. The average wait for a kidney is three years.
"People are getting kidneys now that doctors wouldn't have tried years ago, including some in the 70s," Satko said. "Transplant recipients are more likely to die now of old age or other disease than kidney disease.
"Essentially, if someone gets past 10 years with normal kidney function following a transplant, the odds are good the kidney will last another 10 to 30 years."
Dr. Jesse Meredith, who performed Young's transplant, reminisced with Young, a semi-retired art instructor, about their experience following Young's recent routine checkup with Satko. They laughed and shared stories more like dear friends than patient and doctor.
Meredith performed all of Baptist's kidney transplants from 1970 to 1989. He became a professor emeritus in 1993, but at age 88 still provides lectures to students.
As commonplace as a kidney transplant is today, it was considered a high-risk procedure at the time of Young's operation, Meredith said. Even now, 75 percent of transplanted kidneys come from cadavers.
Even though Meredith performed the two previous kidney transplants at Baptist, and he was confident Young's body would not reject the kidney, he still spent the night in the intensive-care unit after the surgery.
"There are three kinds of rejections," Meredith said. "One that happens the day the organ is put in, one that happens within a week and one that is chronic, years down the road.
"Although I was pretty sure the surgery would be a success, I just didn't want to be too far away in case something happened.
"We also didn't know all that much about the impact of a kidney transplant to the donor, such as the risk of renal failure and complications, which made what Jack's sister did all the more remarkable," Meredith said.
'The Lord was in it'
Sharon Young Parsons, 25 at the time, wasn't too keen on the idea when she, their mother and an uncle came to Baptist Hospital to be screened for a match. Their 10-year-old brother also was a suitable match, but too young for the surgery.
"My mom and my uncle both said, 'Let it be me,' and I hoped it would be one of them, too," Parsons said. "But I just knew before we came to Winston that it would be me."
Parsons said she prayed over the decision, in part because Jack didn't ask her to donate her kidney. She said she initially wasn't willing to accept the answer she got from God.
"Oh, I would argue with Him and wrestle with Him because this was a part of my body, and I had a 6-year-old and an 18-month-old at home, and my husband wasn't thrilled about it, either," Parsons said. "But I knew the Lord was in it, and that was that."
Meredith said that in some ways, the surgery was tougher on Parsons than on her brother. She said she was cut open from her navel to the middle of her back.
Even though she went back to work after six weeks, she said it took years before her back felt normal where the kidney had been.
"They had the second person who had been a donor at Baptist talk to me," Parsons said.
"He said that Jack would be getting better sooner than I would, and he was right. I didn't want to eat and struggled to drink anything while Jack was regaining his strength."
The pain proved worthwhile, Parsons said, after she saw that "Jack had taken this second chance at life to heart."
"He has witnessed to and touched a lot of people about his experience and his faith. That change in him just confirmed to me the Lord was in it."
Show and tell
Meredith said he ought to take Young along with him as a show-and-tell to his medical students — living proof of what life-changing surgery looks like 40 years later.
"We take dialysis for granted these days, but it was considered as experimental treatment in the 1970s that some high-up medical officials didn't support," Meredith said.
"I'm not sure Jack would be alive today if he had to stay on dialysis all these years."
Besides having a near perfect donor match, Meredith said that Young's "rebelliousness" made him the kind of patient who tended to do well after major surgery.
"He didn't sit back. He took ownership of his recovery," Meredith said.
Young went back to Appalachian State University the next fall. He met his wife, Cynthia, a year later while pursuing his master's degree in art education.
"I couldn't play sports anymore, but I took up hiking and horseback riding and concentrated on my art, writing and on traveling," Young said.
"I saw life in a whole new way after the transplant, like I was born again — not taking away from the Christian belief in being born again — but life here on Earth had new meaning."
Shaking Meredith's hand once again, tears formed in the corners of Young's eyes when he said, "It's not often you get to thank someone for a job well done 40 years after the job was done."
Tearing up herself, Cynthia Young said, "Jack was given the chance to live the life God meant for him to, doing God's will, and he's done it.
"We're so blessed."
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