Points of Persuasion Syndicate

(P-O-P-S) Dr. Lloyd Ratner, the kidney surgeon known for paired match, who had recently relocated to the Presbyterian portion of New York-Presbyterian hospital as Surgeon Director of Renal Transplant, told me, “Transplant is no walk in the park…” Still, for a person like me who had built up intense emotional fear about dialysis, it was the solution of choice. My kidneys were at the ESRD (End Stage Renal Disease) point, and I had spent ten days in New York Hospital being detoxified and beginning dialysis through a newly installed chest catheter.

Not only was transplant the only option, but between the time that my sister had been transplanted at Columbia-Presbyterian hospital almost 13 years before and now, transplant had become so mainstream that in New York State alone there were more than 5,600 persons waiting on the UNOS list. If you didn’t have a family member or friend available donor, the wait currently was 5 to 7 years, and applicants were encouraged to sign up in other states that took no more than three hours to get to by plane with shorter wait time.

On June 12, a Sunday evening when I had left my cell phone at home mistakenly to attend the latest Robert Altman flick, “A Prairie Home Companion,” I got the call the minute I walked in my front door. There was a kidney available if the person next in line to receive it tested positive. That meant that that person would reject this kidney, and it would be mine. I packed my bag, sensing in my gut I would be the recipient.

It was a strange feeling, knowing that some five year olds’ parent had had the presence of mind in a time of grief to donate the organs of their small child to try and save the lives of other people. My brief experiences with Columbia-Presbyterian told me to accept the kidney. They were forthright, in the forefront of most organ transplant and had a compassionate, responsive staff. When I got the second call to come in, I took my suitcase and went confidently with my husband to the admissions desk at Milstein.

While my husband went through the forms process, I was seen in Shorin Clinic on the seventh floor. An informed fellow studying for his PHD in public health took my medical history, an IV nurse got me on the first shot and I was off to my room, where shortly thereafter I was carted down to the operating room to lay and wait to receive my kidney. I was the second operation.

Dr. Ratner came by; I asked him what my Rogosin nephrologist had asked me – am I getting one or two kidneys, and he explained that “there was no evidence that two were better than one, and this way there were more to go round.” He was the same guy that in our original meeting explained that you try and fit the part to the jalopy it was going into, meaning a man size kidney for a man, and a woman or child size kidney for a woman, taking into account height and weight. He didn’t mince words, and I liked that.

I thanked him prior to the operation for the opportunity to get off dialysis, and I lay there waiting my turn at a longer, less fettered existence. I felt informed in my choice of this surgeon and this hospital. Columbia-Presbyterian, a single corporate entity with New York Hospital but a separate working machine, impressed me as better oiled, more tightly controlled technically, more experienced with plasmapheresis, and overall more responsive to its patients in its entire kidney transplant operation. I felt that I had won the lottery!