When Jim Welborn's kidneys failed in 1985, his brother Mark came to the rescue by donating a kidney for transplant. Last year, Welborn's kidneys began to fail for the second time. This time ‹ 18 years later ‹ Mark's wife, Cheri Welborn, stepped up to the plate.
Jim Welborn noticed there was a problem last January, when his clothes no longer fit. After nearly two decades of healthy functioning, his kidneys were shutting down again.
"I was starting to swell up," he explained, between sips of coffee at his home in Ninilchik. "My pants were getting tight."
Jim suffers from chronic glomerulonephritis, a disease that impairs the kidneys' ability to filter waste and excess water from the blood to make urine, which can lead to fluid retention and weight gain.
Glomerulonephritis is an autoimmune disease that can be caused by bacterial infection, but also may arise spontaneously. Either way, the result is that the body's immune defense system targets its own cells.
"In laymen's terms, my immune system attacked my kidneys and destroyed them," Jim said.
He would need a second kidney transplant to avoid going on dialysis for the rest of his life. Jim had been on dialysis before and didn't want to go back again.
For a full year before receiving a new kidney from his brother, Jim traveled three times a week to Anchorage to have his blood artificially filtered by dialysis, since the procedure wasn't available on the Kenai Peninsula.
Jim's wife, Bev, usually drove him, but sometimes she couldn't make it so he had to drive himself, which could be dangerous due to the chronic exhaustion caused by kidney failure. Once, he nodded off and, although he didn't crash, he bounced his car off a guard-rail.
Though Jim was grateful for the lifesaving dialysis procedure, he often developed leg cramps and an intense thirst during the four-hour process.
"It was a year of existing," he said of the experience. "It's just something to keep you alive."
Though quantum leaps have been made in the science of transplant surgery over the past 18 years, Welborn's options for donors are essentially the same now as they were in 1985 ‹ either locate a living, breathing person willing to donate a kidney or be placed on the "cadaver list" and wait in line to receive a kidney harvested from the recently deceased ‹ which could take five years.
Since relatives are frequently the best matches, each of the Jim's four children volunteered to be tested as potential donors. Three were eliminated immediately because they had the wrong blood type. However, the Welborn's oldest daughter, Sarah, was a match.
Sarah agreed to donate a kidney to her father and underwent a battery of additional screening. Two weeks before the transplant surgery was scheduled ‹ at the end of July ‹ a final test determined that Sarah's kidneys were "spongy," which meant they were susceptible to kidney stones. Although her kidneys were otherwise healthy, it would be too risky for Sarah to walk around with only one, so she was eliminated as a donor, according to the Welborns.
A cousin of Jim's who lives in Alaska was willing to donate; however, tests showed her blood to be incompatible. At this point, Jim's sister in-law, Cheri, stepped in and said she'd like to be tested.
The fact that her husband had donated a kidney to his brother years earlier helped motivate Cheri and put her mind at ease.
"You'd never know he has one kidney," she said, recovering at her home in Kenai. "I looked at him and thought, 'I can do this.'"
Cheri passed all the tests and turned out to be a perfect match.
As the date of surgery neared, the gravity of the inherent dangers began to set in.
"The reality with any surgery is you can have complications," Cheri said. "You wonder, with the anesthesia, if you'll ever come out of it."
She didn't realize how concerned she'd been for her own mortality, until she woke up to the glaring overhead lights of the recovery room.
"I'll never forget it. I saw the room lights and yelled, 'Hallelujah, I'm still here.'"
Although doctors at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle where the transplant was performed, had warned Cheri the efficiency of her kidney function might diminish with only one organ, almost three months after surgery that hasn't proved to be the case.
Tests show the quality of her kidney function hasn't been affected, Cheri said.
The reward for putting her own health on the line was in seeing the improvement the donation of her organ made on her brother in-law's health ‹ improvement that was apparent almost immediately, while they were both still in the hospital.
"He just seemed so happy," Cheri said. "It was amazing how quickly you could see he was getting better. That was very rewarding."
The transplant has renewed Jim's vigor and allowed him to get back to normal ‹ which means getting back to work on his house.
"I feel better than I have in a long, long time," he said. "I came back all enthused about working ‹ I'm working upstairs now, running electrical wire."
The Welborns hope their story will encourage others to donate organs, especially those who aren't blood relatives of the recipient.
"Anyone can donate a kidney," Bev wants everyone to know.
For more information about kidney donation, call the Organ Transplant Program at Swedish Medical Center at (800) 996-7426 or the National Kidney Foundation at (800) 622-9010.
Life Alaska Donor Services deals with organ donations in Alaska. To become a donor, you can visit the local Alaska Department of Motor Vehicles on Kalifornsky Beach Road, call Life Alaska in Anchorage at (907) 562-5433, or visit the Web site at www.lifealaska.org.
