'Spare' kidneys needed

JoAnn Herzog believes what goes around comes around. She's just hoping it comes around in time for her 8-year-old granddaughter Kalee Gennon, who was born without a working kidney.

Before Kalee was 2 years old, Herzog's husband, John, donated his kidney to the little girl. JoAnn Herzog had planned to but wasn't a match, so she became a samaritan donor, providing the organ to someone she met only the day before the operation.

Utah has 20 samaritan kidney transplants that have been completed or are in the process since Intermountain Donor Services launched a samaritan campaign a year ago to spread the word that healthy people only need one working kidney; the spare can be shared with someone who is ill from kidney disease.

Someone like Kalee, who was on hand Wednesday afternoon at the University of Utah's Pediatric Dialysis Unit. The Whittier Elementary student spends three hours a day, three times a week in dialysis.

In 1998, her family was in a serious car accident. Her brother died and her mother was paralyzed, Herzog said. Right after that, Kalee's body began to reject the kidney her grandfather had donated.

Intermountain Donor Services would like to see the number of living kidney donors at least double each year. But what they long for are enough kidneys to provide transplants to the 130-140 kidney patients on waiting lists in Utah, said spokesman Ben Dieterle.

It's not a pie-in-the-sky dream. Last year, 47 percent of Utahns surveyed by Kagel Research Associates for the agency said they would personally be willing to donate a kidney to a stranger, while 96 percent said they support organ donation. Over the last year, more than 200 people inquired about the program, and about 20 people have donated a kidney or will donate soon.

It would take fewer than 1 percent of Utahns becoming samaritan donors to completely eliminate the state's waiting list for kidney transplants, Dieterle said.

In the past year, 69 people became organ donors, a record. From those 69 donors, 249 organs were recovered, leading to transplants ranging from kidneys to lungs to small bowels. Tissue recovery also increased between 2002 and 2003, from 453 donors to 531.

People can donate — with different guidelines depending on which organ or tissue — up to about age 80.

Ethan Jensen was one of last year's samaritan donors. Jensen, then 23, provided a kidney to Lee Cook, an Idaho farmer and school teacher. The two men have become fast friends.