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Maine Kidney Donor 'Chain' Gives Three New Lease on Life

Patty Wight
/
MPBN

Six Maine residents, from Pemaquid to Harpswell to Scarborough, are now linked through the largest organ donor chain in the state. Earlier this month, in surgeries at Maine Medical Center that ran from 6 in the morning to 9 at night, three kidneys were transferred from living donors to eager recipients. The six members of the chain met for the first time today at the Portland hospital.

 

The story starts with one guy: "My name is Stan Galvin, and I reside in Pemaquid, Maine."

Stan Galvin is conscious about giving back to the community. He volunteers at an animal shelter. He donates blood platelets. But a couple years ago, Galvin heard about kidney donation and something about it stuck with him.

"More than anything, it was just an opportunity to give someone a new life," he says. "I have two kidneys...or, I did."

In the U.S., about 100,000 people are on a kidney transplant waiting list. But only 17,000 transplants are performed every year. That's a huge gap between supply and demand. Donors like Stanley Galvin have the potential to change that. He's what's called an "altruistic" donor - someone willing to give a kidney to whomever needs it. It's the first link in what can become an organ donor chain, says Dr. John Vella, the Director of Maine Medical Center's transplant program.

"So this is known as kidney paired donation," Vella says, "and kidney paired donation is a new field in organ transplantation - a growth field in the past decade."

Here's how the "chain" concept works:  Say you have a loved one who needs a kidney. You volunteer to donate, but you're not a match. In the past, that was the end of the story. The potential donor was crossed off the list. But in paired kidney donation, that potential donor is asked if they'd be willing to donate to someone else. And if they are, it can continue a chain that starts with the altruistic donor.

Here in Maine, Stanley Galvin's kidney went to James McLaughlin, of Scarborough. "Forty-two years ago, I was diagnosed with kidney disease, chronic kidney disease," he says.

After so many years, McLaughlin was facing dialysis - an artificial process that does the work of kidneys that no longer function. "I don't want to be hooked to a machine three days a week," he says, "and knowing that, on dialysis, it's only a matter of time before the other organs take a hit, and that's it."

McLaughlin's wife and daughter both stepped forward to donate. But neither was a match. Then, McLaughlin learned that donor Stanley Galvin was. And McLaughlin's wife, Mary Ann, said that she would still donate her kidney even though it would go to someone else.

"It really wasn't any different, because my husband was going to benefit from receiving a kidney," she says, "and that means another person was going to benefit from receiving mine."

That recipient is Jan Bohlin, who has a rare disorder that affects his kidneys and, until the transplant, made him weak and tired. A friend offered to donate a kidney so Bohlin could avoid dialysis, but he was incompatible. Bohlin credits both his friend and Mary Ann McLaughlin with providing a light at the end of a 10-year tunnel.

"My life is going to be very different for the next 15, 20 years," he says. "I'm going to be still getting older, but maybe not quite as rapidly. And I know I feel better already."

George Shepard is Bohlin's friend. He says, in some ways, it was easier donating to someone he didn't know. "Maybe I even like that better going into a program," Shepard says, "because if there were complications on the recipient side, I wouldn't feel the guilt - like, he got my kidney and then something happened."

But the recipient - Richard Cook - says he finally feels like a normal person again. Cook endured hours of dialysis for two-and-a-half years and thought he'd have to wait a couple more before getting a transplant. "And then they called me a month later and said, 'Oh, by the way, you're going to get a living donor kidney,' " Cook says. "I almost fell on the floor. I couldn't believe it."

A kidney from a living donor lasts three times longer than from a deceased donor - three decades or more. It's one benefit of the kidney donor chain. But another, says Maine Medical Center transplant surgeon Dr. Juan Palma, is that the chain encourages more giving - the kind that can profoundly change another person's life.