THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, March 13, 1996 TAG: 9603130507
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DIANE TENNANT, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
Joan Carlton doesn't understand all the fuss.
Wouldn't any parent, she asked, offer to donate a kidney to their sick child?
``When I found out Jerry needed a kidney, I walked right down and signed up,'' Carlton said Tuesday as she stood by her son's bed at Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters. ``I never thought about it. You know, Jerry needed it, and I had two.''
Now she has one. In surgery last week, doctors took one of Carlton's kidneys and transplanted it into 13-year-old Jerry Hays. On Tuesday, Jerry left the hospital.
``I have a scar here,'' Carlton said to Jerry, drawing her finger across the right side of her dress.
``I have a scar here, too,'' Jerry replied, but he pulled up his shirt to reveal a C-shaped incision from back to abdomen.
Since the age of 7, Jerry has been a kidney patient. His progressive kidney failure, called chronic glomerulonephritis, required doctors to remove both his kidneys last August. Since then, he has been hooked up to dialysis at home at night, and allowed to attend his Newport News middle school during the day. But that was not the ideal situation for a teenager, said Dr. Michael Solhaug, one of Jerry's doctors at King's Daughters.
``For children, life on dialysis is really not an acceptable alternative compared to the life they can have with transplantation,'' Solhaug said. ``The most important thing is that transplantation provides mobility, to live in a world with other children, to be perceived as part of that world, not to picture themselves as different.''
Carlton began undergoing tests to determine whether her tissue would match Jerry's. Tell everyone, she urged on Tuesday, that the testing is done free, that donors don't have to pay. Her employer, Norfolk Paint, was understanding, she said, and helped her stay employed while undergoing tests and surgery.
The new kidney will not cure Jerry's disease. He will require medical exams every three to six weeks for the foreseeable future to ensure that the donated kidney is functioning.
``The type of kidney disease he had can recur in the transplanted kidney,'' Solhaug said. ``Even though they'd like us to put in the kidney and walk away and never see us again, we're inextricably bound. As long as he has that kidney, we need to help take care of it. The best-case scenario - and it should happen this way because he got the kidney from his mother - is that the kidney will continue to function well.''
Parent donors are preferred for pediatric kidney transplants because there is less chance of organ failure. But not every parent can, or will, be a donor. That is why Solhaug tells Carlton she is special, although Carlton can't believe she is any different from other moms.
``You really admire a parent who's willing to do this for a child,'' Solhaug said. ``It does take a special person with special courage and commitment to the child. I think for Jerry, who has, quite frankly, had a pretty tough time with his kidney disease, it's especially rewarding to see that he can indeed have an opportunity to be the kind of kid that he really wants to be.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
VICKI CRONIS/The Virginian-Pilot
Jerry Hays, 13, sits with his mother, Joan Carlton, after leaving
the hospital following a kidney transplant in which Carlton was the
donor.
KEYWORDS: ORGAN DONORS by CNB