Share their touching story in this video from Fox 5 below:

Visit the Emory Kidney Transplant Program website for more information on the Emory Paired Donor Exchange program.

Related Resources:

• One Good Transplant Deed Leads to 6 Changed Lives

Of course, the ETC is much more than these numbers, but volume is one indication of just how busy our center is — and our programs are growing. In 2011, Emory performed 360 adult and 70 pediatric transplants. That means the total number of transplants increased 13% from 2011 to 2012. Each program is growing, too. The kidney program expanded from 204 transplants in 2011 to 230 in 2012, and the liver program grew from 93 transplants in 2011 to 111 in 2012. There were 11 kidney and pancreas transplants at the ETC in 2011 and 17 in 2012. The heart team transplanted 23 in 2011 and 34 in 2012, and the lung program transplanted 29 in 2011 and 34 in 2012.

This accomplishment never would have been possible without the gracious gifts of life organ donors provide to our transplant recipients. We are ever grateful to the donors who have indicated their wishes and the families that have made the decision to donate and save or restore the lives of our patients.

Related Resources

• Living on Through Others- Blog
• An Emory Heart Transplant Patient Story-Blog 

Scott Haggard shared with Emory physicians and staff the story of his sister, Terri Haggard Wade – a loving 48 year old wife, mother, sister and daughter – who spent her professional career as a nurse.  And as part of the medical profession, Terri knew the importance of organ donation.  As a matter of fact, when her son was learning to drive, Terri said that before he could drive on his own, he would need to register to become an organ donor.

It was March of 2009 when Terri was rear ended in an automobile accident.  She began to experience headaches, and when they continued after a few weeks, Terri decided to go to an urgent care center to be evaluated. The urgent care center sent her to a nearby hospital to have a CT scan of her head.  And that was when they discovered Terri had a brain tumor.

On April 15, 2009, Terri had surgery to remove her tumor.  The surgery was more complicated than anticipated, and Terri did not wake up immediately after the surgery.  After ten days, Terri still had not awakened and her intracranial pressure spiked to very high levels, causing brain death.

At this time, Terri’s medical team approached her family asking them to make a very difficult decision.  They had to decide whether or not to allow Terri’s organs to be donated – they knew she wasn’t really with them anymore.

“We were never going to have Terri,” said Scott, “but to have her be able to help others, even in death, meant everything to us”.

To honor Terri’s wishes, her organs were donated, saving lives as she had done so many times before as a neonatal intensive care nurse at Egleston.  Terri was very loved among many – over 700 people were present at her funeral.

Although Scott knows that the individuals who received his sister’s organ are grateful for their gift of life, he says “It also means a lot to us, the donor family, to know that Terri is able to live through others”.

Related Resources:

• Register as an Organ Donor
• Emory Transplant Center

The gift of giving is rewarding on many levels. Giving doesn’t have to be monetary or flashy; in fact, taking the extra step to register and give the gift of life can be the most rewarding gift ever.

Take for example two of our patients, Kevin Jordan and Coach Tom Walter. In 2011, Kevin was diagnosed with ANCA vasculitis, an autoimmune disorder that typically leads to almost immediate kidney failure. At the time, Kevin was an all-star baseball player being actively recruited by both Wake Forest University (WFU) and Auburn University, but he was faced with an illness that could potentially change his future, not only in baseball, but in life. Kevin opted to join the crew at Wake Forest, but as his condition worsened, it became clear to both Kevin and Coach Tom that something would need to be done.

With only a 15% chance of a non-family member making it through the organ transplant matching to donation process, Coach Tom stepped in, armed with a goal and a healthy kidney to donate , he got tested to see if he was a match to serve as Kevin’s donor. The chances of Coach Tom’s kidney being a viable option for Kevin were slim, but… what if? Coach Tom proved to be a viable organ donor for Kevin, and without hesitation, he agreed. You can read more about their story here.

After going through with the transplant, both Kevin Jordan and Coach Tom Walter are doing fine. So great, in fact, that they recently came back to Atlanta with the rest of the Wake Forest Baseball team, who was in town to take on the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets! It seems that Kevin and Coach Tom truly continue to hit the ball out of the park!

April is National Donate Life Month, register today to be an organ donor and give the lasting gift of life.

Related Resources

• Kevin Jordan Back to Practice
• Emory Kidney Transplant Patient Story: Kevin Jordan
• Donate Life Month: Celebrating Living Donors

Here are the activities we have planned during Donate Life Month:

• Thursday, April 18, 2013 — Swing Easy, Hit Hard Charity Golf Tournament

Book your favorite foursome in this benefit golf tournament and support the Emory Transplant Center and Georgia Transplant Foundation. Event info and registration > 

(Kirk Franz, the recreation manager for the city of Johns Creek, and his family and friends first organized the Swing Easy, Hit Hard Charity Golf Tournament in 2010 to support his transplant fund. He had a lifesaving liver transplant at Emory to treat cholangiocarcinoma, or bile duct cancer. Now that he is fully recovered from his transplant, he and his family (pictured below) organized a nonprofit foundation to continue hosting the event annually to benefit other transplant patients at Emory and at Georgia Transplant Foundation. The foundation helps patients like Franz raise funds for escalating medical expenses following transplantation, which the organization matches up to $10,000 in the first year post-transplant. Last year’s golf tournament raised more than $2,000 each for the Emory Transplant Center and Georgia Transplant Foundation.)

• Friday, April 19, 2013 — Blue and Green Day

Flaunt your best blue and green and show your support for Donate Life’s efforts to register individuals as organ, eye and tissue donors. Wear blue and green or decorate your office or join the day’s Facebook event page. Make sure you post your pictures on our Emory Transplant Center Facebook page, too!

You can also learn more about Blue and Green Day on the Donate Life website.

• Week of April 22 – 26, 2013 — Emory Donate Life Week

Look for information tables with staff and LifeLink of Georgia volunteers answering questions about donation on Monday and Tuesday during lunch hour outside Emory University Hospital’s Asbury Court and in the mornings on the walkway between Emory Clinic buildings A and B.

This month also gives us an opportunity to recognize and thank our neuroscience and critical care colleagues dedicated to caring for patients at the end-of-life who are potential donors. They lovingly work with donor families during a stressful point in their lives. In addition, we commend the staff that work with individuals who make the decision to become a related or non-related living donor. The donation process can be a catharsis for these donors and families, who help make renewed lives possible through transplantation.

Related Resources:

• Emory Transplant Center

Currently more than 115,000 men, women and children are awaiting organ transplants to save their lives. They’re in need of hearts, kidneys, livers, lungs, and other organs which can all be transplanted if donors were available, giving them a second chance at life. Understandably, potential donors may have reservations about organ donation, but we’ve compiled a list of pros and cons to help you with your decision of the gift of life.

Pros:

• ONE organ donor can save up to EIGHT lives. There are nearly 115,000 men, women and children waiting for an organ transplant in the U.S. By registering to become an organ donor, you can help save lives!
• For the transplant recipient, it is a second chance at life. For some, an organ transplant means no longer having to be dependent on costly routine treatments to survive. It allows many recipients to return to a normal lifestyle.
• For the family of the deceased donor, they feel a sense of goodness that came from a tragedy – that if the organs are transplanted into a young, deserving person, then their loss was not in vain. Donor families take some consolation in knowing that some part of their loved one continues in life.
• Living Donation – It is possible to donate organs while you are still alive. Living people can donate a kidney, portions of the liver, lung, pancreas and intestines, as well as blood, and go on to live healthy lives. Most often it is relatives who do living tissue donation. It is possible, however, to register for completely humanitarian reasons and give organs to a stranger.

Cons:

• Families might be confused by the fact that donor bodies are often kept on life support while the tissues are removed. Surgeons do not remove any tissues unless the person is brain dead, but they sometimes put the body on a ventilator to keep the heart pumping fresh blood into the tissues to keep them alive long enough to harvest. This is not the same as life, but there is a moment when the ventilator is removed and the heart stops.
• Another “con” might be that the donor does not usually get to choose who the organs go to, and perhaps an organ will go to someone of a different faith, political viewpoint or temperament than the donor. The donor has to believe that all life is sacred and that anyone who receives the “ultimate gift” of a donor organ will be grateful and be imbued with a sense of gratitude and a desire to pay it forward.

To become a donor and for more information visit Donate Life today.

Related Resources

• Donate Life Website
• Emory Transplant Website

Sherrell Gay

If you remember reading about kidney transplant recipient Ken Sutha and his participation in the U.S. Transplant Games, you might also remember reading about Sherrell Gay, who received her heart at the Emory Heart Transplant Center and also participated in the games. In fact, Sherrell celebrated the 8-year anniversary of her transplant procedure during the Games’ closing ceremonies.

Although Sherrell (who’s originally from Waynesboro, GA) received her first heart transplant a decade ago, for the past 18 months, she has been on the waiting list for another heart due to allograph vasculopathy, a fairly common long-term complication from heart transplant. Allograph vasculoplasty is known more commonly as chronic rejection, which can develop in transplanted hearts at any time – soon after transplant or many years later. The small vessels in the heart become blocked first and as the disease progresses, the larger vessels can become blocked too. “I was diagnosed with allograph vasculpathy at my 7 year annual post-transplant appointment,” Sherrell recalls. “I was treated with medication for 1 ½ years and then the team decided the disease had progressed too far to benefit from drug therapy and I needed to be evaluated for another heart transplant.”

Both throughout her first heart transplant journey and while Sherrell was hospitalized for a portion of 2012, her kidney function continued to decline. “As my wait time continued, my kidney failure worsened, as did my heart function,” Sherrell recalls. Emory’s kidney transplant team was asked to consult on her case, and they concluded that after Sherrell had spent 10 years on immunosuppressants and her kidney function was in decline for almost a decade, her kidneys were in end stage kidney failure. They added Sherrell to the kidney transplant waiting list, knowing that the other option was a potential lifetime on dialysis following her next heart transplant.

Thankfully, Sherrell was contacted about her waiting list status and learned she would be receiving her new heart and two kidneys from the same organ donor. “On the day I got the call there were organs matched for me, I had to start emergency continual dialysis. The organs became available at just the right time,” she says, and “by doing both organs from the same donor, I stood a better chance at successfully living healthy.”

On December 9, 2012, Sherrell received her successful double organ transplant and is now recovering and doing well. Dr. Duc Nguyen performed her heart transplant first, and Dr. Paul Tso performed her kidney transplant immediately after.

While Gay spent much of 2012 at Emory, this mother of two daughters and one son never missed a chance to help cheer up and educate other candidates and recipients and families about the transplant process from her bedside, except, of course, when she was most sick. (At the worst point, she suffered two heart attacks and was placed on emergency peritoneal dialysis.) If such a thing were awarded, Gay would win the Oscar for the Best Advocate Ever for Organ Transplantation.

“I am extremely grateful for my donor family who made the decision to make that donation of life — we got the best gift that day,” says Gay, who also helps lead the Georgia Transplant Foundation Mentor Project.

We are very glad to hear about Sherrell’s remarkable recovery and send her best wishes on her continued recovery and on the upcoming arrival of her first grandbaby. Thanks to her double organ transplant, Sherrell is now well enough to be by her daughter Tracy’s side when she gives birth at the end of March.

The gift of life just in time to witness the gift of a new life; now that is a transplant miracle.

Related Resources:

• Emory Transplant Center

Watch this heartwarming Fox 5 News piece and meet some of our patients whose lives have been changed thanks to their heart transplant procedures.

 Related Resources:

Emory Transplant Center on Facebook

• Video: Heart Transplant Patient Success Story
• Heart Failure Information
• Emory Heart Transplant Center Website
• Emory Heart & Vascular Center Website

Ed Mann and Felicia Henderson on a recent visit to the Emory Transplant Center.

As a physical education teacher, every day Ed Mann helps keep the children of Mount Zion Elementary School in Carrollton, GA in tip-top-physical condition, but ironically, his own health has been suffering for the past three years. In 2009, Ed was diagnosed with scleroderma, an autoimmune disease that resulted in a decline in his heart and pulmonary health initially, but then, took a toll on his kidneys. As a result, six hours of every one of Ed’s days was spent undergoing dialysis treatments. And despite his declining health and ongoing medical needs, he still didn’t missed a single day of work.

After seeking a kidney donor via traditional methods to no avail, one day a few months ago, Ed had an idea that he called “a shot in the dark,” but it was a decision that proved to be much more than that. Ed posted a message on Facebook, “Just a little advertising. Still need a kidney. 404-712-4450.”, which is the phone number of the Emory Kidney Transplant Program. A shot in the dark turned into an even more unlikely set of circumstances when the person who answered Ed’s call for help was not only a fellow employee at Mount Zion Elementary, but also Ed’s longtime friend of 16 years, Felicia Henderson.

Not knowing whether she would be a match for Ed, “I just called the number,” recalls Felicia. And after undergoing the necessary testing, the team at the Emory Transplant Center confirmed that Felicia was indeed a match to be Ed’s kidney donor. Upon receiving the news, Felicia immediately committed to being Ed’s donor, “People that are able to give a kidney live longer than the average person, not because they have given a kidney, but because they were healthy enough in the first place to be able to do it.”

Because of Felicia’s gift of life, Ed will continue to coach and teach the children of Mount Zion Elementary how to stay physically fit. “The gift of life. I know I’ve got so many good friends. Very thoughtful, very kind.”, he says.

Felicia and Ed’s transplant operation took place exactly two months ago today, on November 16, 2012. Since the surgery, both Ed and Felicia are doing well. They spent time with their families over the holidays celebrating renewed health and the gift of life, and have both returned to work at Mount Zion Elementary.

When we asked Ed if there is anything he would like to say to Felicia, he told us, “Yes. I would like to tell her thank you for saving my life. You are the most thoughtful and kind person I know, and I appreciate what you did for me.”

Related Resources:

• Kidney Transplant

Stephanie Lindstrom

Today, thanks to a triple organ transplant, a 37-year-old mother of two in Georgia is celebrating Christmas with a renewed spirit of hope and thankfulness this year. Just five months ago, Stephanie Lindstrom received a triple organ transplant at Emory University Hospital, the first triple transplant ever to be performed in the state of Georgia.

Following a lifetime battle of congenital heart complications, Stephanie’s condition became critical this summer when she was told she would need not only a new heart, but that she would also need a new liver and kidney. All other interventions to help her were not successful.

“Because of Stephanie’s heart failure, she developed liver failure. Then she became septic, which led to kidney failure. So a triple organ transplant was our only hope to save her,” says Stuart Knechtle, MD, professor of surgery at Emory University School of Medicine and director of the Adult Liver Transplantation Program.

Stephanie, a former marathon runner, was born without a tricuspid valve, which helps move blood through the heart in the right direction. She had four surgeries as a child to repair the problem. After she graduated from college, more heart valve problems occurred, but this time, with her mitral valve. Doctors diagnosed Stephanie with mitral valve regurgitation and said it needed to be corrected.

Stephanie, who lives in South Carolina, scheduled an appointment with Wendy Book, MD, associate professor of medicine at Emory and medical director of Emory’s Adult Congenital Heart Disease Program. “When I first met Stephanie, I immediately knew she was a resilient, strong willed person who was a fighter,” says Dr. Book. “We knew her heart and liver were in bad shape because of her congenital complications, but problems with her kidney had not yet surfaced.”

In September 2011, Stephanie was placed on the waiting list for a heart and a liver. In May 2012, she contracted cytomegalovirus, and was admitted to the hospital to be put on dialysis and breathing machines. At that point, she was moved up on the waiting list for her new organs, which now included a kidney.

On July 7, 2012, doctors got the call that a match had been found for Stephanie. On that day, both her heart and liver were transplanted during a lengthy surgery.

First Brian Kogon, MD, surgical director of the Adult Congenital Heart Disease Program transplanted her new heart, assisted by David Vega, MD, director of Emory’s Heart Transplant Program. Then Knechtle and transplant surgeon Andrew Adams, MD, transplanted the liver. The following day, Knechtle transplanted her kidney. All three organs came from the same donor.

“The risks for a triple organ transplant are very high for a patient with a three-system failure, and one we had never attempted before,” says Kogon. “Her previous surgeries and critically-ill state at the time of the transplants made things challenging. But Mrs. Lindstrom’s age and determination to survive made her an ideal candidate for these procedures.”

Stephanie spent the next three months at Emory University Hospital recovering, while battling complications. She was able to return home in October 2012, five months after she was admitted.

“I am so grateful to the doctors, nurses and support staff who made these transplants possible,” says Stephanie. “They have given me a new lease on life. The holiday season has truly taken on such a special meaning to my family and me this year because of the many gifts we have been given.”