Kidney donor deal a win-win

The story begins with a disappointment, followed by two acts of altruism. Now, as GiGi Allred says, "We all share body parts, so we're family."

Allred is talking about her sister and two women who just three weeks ago were total strangers. On Monday the four women sat at a table at LDS Hospital discussing the day they took part in a kidney exchange that the hospital hopes will ease the chronic shortage of transplant organs in the Intermountain West.

To keep the story straight, it helps to have a cast of characters. There's Candace Lindquist, 50, of Springville, who 17 years ago was diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease. She had one kidney removed at that time; last February the second kidney was removed and she was put on dialysis. Her sister, GiGi Allred of Orem, planned to donate one of her own kidneys to Lindquist but was disappointed to discover that her blood and tissue types were incompatible.

"Normally, that's where we would have stopped," explained LDS Hospital transplant nurse coordinator Kristie Baker. "We put Candace on the list" for donor transplants. There are now 72,000 Americans on that list, all hoping for a new kidney.

Also on the transplant list was 25-year-old Jennifer Morrison of Tooele, who was diagnosed with glomerulonephritis in 2003. Morrison's kidneys continued to deteriorate, and in 2005 she was put on dialysis three times a week.

And, finally, there is 23-year-old Kristen Bylund. A nursing student at BYU, Bylund had heard a talk a couple of years ago about organ donation and was "really touched." Then she went on a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and when she came back she decided the time was right to be a "Good Samaritan" donor, offering one of her kidneys to a total stranger.

So here was the plan the transplant team at LDS Hospital came up with: If she was willing, Allred could also be a Good Samaritan donor, donating a kidney to Morrison. That would put Allred's sister, Lindquist, at the top of the donor list. As it turned out, Lindquist's blood and tissue were a perfect match with Good Samaritan donor Bylund's.

On July 3, all four were admitted to the hospital for the "paired exchange."

"The neatest thing for me," Allred explained at a press conference Monday, "was the very next day after the surgery there those two came be-bopping down the hall, with color in their faces. It was worth every single ounce of everything you go through."

For kidney recipient Morrison, "to say it's a gift is a little bit of an understatement." Morrison has promised to keep in touch with Allred with news about her life and travels, including updates such as "your kidney's in California."

For transplant surgeon LeGrande Belnap, the paired exchange brings hope that the long list of patients waiting for a transplant will have a better chance of getting a "living" kidney. These provide better organ function and improve survival rates than kidneys from deceased donors, he says.

"We want to get all the transplant centers in the West on line," he said. The names, and blood and tissue information, could be kept on file, facilitating the complicated logistics of matching up recipients and donors. Only a handful of other hospitals in the country currently have a paired exchange program. The process can also lead to better tissue matches, Belnap said.

Both Morrison and Lindquist said their new kidneys made them immediately feel healthy again. "I had forgotten what it was like to be a normal person," Morrison said.

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E-mail: jarvik@desnews.com