Imagine you desperately need a kidney transplant. You spend four hours a day, three days a week for five months on dialysis. And you've got multiple family members and friends who want to donate a kidney, but no one is a match.
Then imagine within a half hour of meeting with Dr. Adam Bingaman, kidney surgeon and Director, Living Donor Paired Exchange Kidney Transplant Program at Texas Transplant Institute in San Antonio, Texas, he tells you he has not one but several possible matches in the large database of incompatible kidney donor and recipient pairs.
That's exactly what happened to 62-year-old Buzz, a successful entrepreneur from Utah on assignment in San Antonio for three years, who received his first kidney transplant at age 29. That kidney started to fail in May 2009 after 32 years. (Most kidneys from living donors last 15-20 years).
Buzz learned that Texas Transplant Institute's program was leading the nation in paired donations. "My son had volunteered to be a donor but was not a good match. We set up an appointment with Dr. Bingaman and within 30 minutes he said he had several possible matches. It was amazing. I was blown away. I felt like I had been wasting my time before I met Dr. Bingaman," says Buzz who had been waiting for five months.
Here's how the Paired Kidney Donor Exchange program works: Buzz and his son, Bob, are paired with another incompatible couple and the matching donor kidneys are exchanged. Bob's son would donate his kidney to an 18-year old young man and that young man's incompatible donor would give his kidney to Buzz. The transplant exchange surgeries were scheduled for mid-December, 2009.
But during the final testing, they discovered the 18-year-old recipient's blood had developed antibodies and he was no longer a match with Buzz's son. Before they even had time to panic, Dr. Bingaman reminded Buzz he had several other matches in his database. "It was pretty remarkable," Buzz says.
A couple of weeks later, a married couple who had been waiting for a match got the call. The wife, a 48-year-old school teacher would donate her kidney to Buzz and her husband, a 52-year-old girls' softball coach, would get Bob's kidney. It was six weeks to the day that Buzz first met with Dr. Bingaman. Everyone was ecstatic that things worked out so well and they all keep in touch.
Since the transplant, Buzz has been religious about the regular follow-up appointments and the fairly intense medication regimen. "It's a small price to pay for how good I feel now. I'm tolerating all the medications well and I'm gradually taking lower doses. I suspect over the next couple months they'll keep reducing them," Buzz says.
Back to working full time just two months after his transplant, Buzz finally took a week to relax and unwind with his wife, Anne, on a recent trip to Hawaii where they are celebrating not just his new kidney but also a new grandson. Just five months after he donated his kidney, Buzz's son, Bob, and his wife learned their plan to adopt a little boy had been approved.
Adam Bingaman, MD, PhD, Francis Wright, Jr., MD, Medical Director, Abdominal Transplant Program, Preston Foster, MD, FACS, Juan Palma-Vargas, MD, and Luke Shen, MD are transplant surgeons with Texas Transplant Physician Group. They serve patients at Texas Transplant Institute's Kidney Transplant Program on the campus of Methodist Specialty and Transplant Hospital in San Antonio, Texas.