MCCOOK, Neb. (AP) - As soon as she found out her dad, Larry Blank of McCook, had been placed on the national kidney transplant list, Megan Blank-Phillips knew she wanted to be a donor.
Her mom and dad, however, weren’t so sure. “We didn’t know if we wanted our daughter to do that,” Larry said. Her mom, too, wasn’t on-board at first. “It was a two-edged sword. We needed a kidney but didn’t want to involve our daughter,” Ruth Blank said.
But Megan refused to change her mind. “We knew there wasn’t a lot of time and getting a donated kidney could take up to three years,” Megan said, a medical clinic billing manager in North Platte, Neb. “I knew it was something I wanted to do.”
The McCook Gazette reports there are nearly 100,000 on the waiting list for a kidney transplant, according to the National Kidney Foundation, with someone added to the list every 14 minutes. With the average wait time to get a kidney at 3 to 5 years, time is of the essence by the time people find out they need one. “There’s a reason why kidney disease is called the silent killer, Dad didn’t know how bad his kidneys were until he was diagnosed with stage 4 kidney disease,” Megan said. In 2018, with both his kidneys failing, Larry was put on the transplant list and looking at possible dialysis. That’s when Megan began the screening process to see if she was a match for her father.
Her parents wrestled with her decision, with Ruth hoping it would be a non-issue. “I kept thinking she wouldn’t be a match so we wouldn’t have to worry about it,” she said. When Megan called and told them she was a match, Ruth at first felt torn, but her daughter’s happiness eased her concern. “Megan’s joyfulness about it, you couldn’t help but be happy,” she said. “I talked to Jason, her husband, to see what he thought, and he said this was her decision and to not take that away from her.”
More than 37 million are living with chronic kidney disease and most don’t know it. Many with the disease don’t experience symptoms until the very late stages when the kidneys are failing. Signs can include high blood pressure, diabetes and a family history of kidney failure, with 660,000 people currently living with kidney failure.
Before the transplant, all three took patient education classes required for those on the transplant list, at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. It was there they learned that kidneys from living donors had the highest success rate and how lucky they were to have one, Ruth said. “We met people in the classes who were really in bad shape from the disease, who were ready for a transplant and desperate for a donor,” she said. “It was heart-wrenching, they were so happy for us yet they were still waiting for a donor.”
Thirteen people die each day while waiting for a life-saving kidney transplant, reports the Kidney Foundation. More people are waiting for a kidney than for all other organs combined and unfortunately, the number of people waiting for kidneys is much larger than the number of available kidneys from living and deceased donors.
Megan and her dad were admitted for surgery on Feb. 27, 2020, the same day cruise ship passengers were admitted at UNMC with a new virus called COVID-19. Megan said. “No one was really scared of it yet,” she said, although the difference between admittance and discharge procedures were “as different as night and day.”
For Megan and her dad, it was great timing, because shortly afterwards, surgeries were suspended due to COVID-19.
After the transplant, both were discharged and recovered at a nearby motel, she for two weeks and Larry for six weeks. It became a family affair as Megan’s her two older sisters, from New York and Colorado, took care of her while Ruth took care of her husband.
Since then, a year later, contact has been minimal between Megan and her dad because of COVID-19, but both talk often on the phone and were able to take a walk together outside a few times. Although she made the decision to donate her kidney, it wouldn’t have occurred without the support of her husband, in-laws and employers, Megan said. “Jason was with me the whole time and he never expressed hesitation about it, he was completely supportive of what I decided to do,” she said, with their three boys, aged 6, 10 and 18, also supporting her decision. The adjustment of having only one kidney has been minimal, she said, with her remaining kidney picking up the slack. “I would do it again in a heartbeat.”
Larry’s back to work as a fabricator supervisor at a local manufacturing plant and said his life is pretty much back to normal, other than drinking lots of water and taking anti-rejection medication. But he and his wife are the first to acknowledge the impact of their daughter donating her kidney. Without it, “It would have been a different story,” Larry said.
“It saved his life,” Ruth said. She still hasn’t forgotten the people she met in Omaha who were waiting for a donor, a kidney donation meaning the difference between life or death for someone, she said. Of all the choices a person can make, “I heard it said that saving someone’s life with a kidney, that’s one thing you’ll never regret doing.”
For more information on becoming a kidney donor, go to the American Kidney Fund at www.kidneyfund.org or NebraskaMed.com/KidneyDonor.
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