This columnist is in need of a kidney transplant and asks for prayers from his readers
By Deacon Bob Hunt
This is going to be a more personal column. People have been asking about my health. I am in need of a kidney transplant.
People who love me have been telling me that I am doing too much. That’s likely true, though I am mostly doing well. I do get a bit wobbly some days, feeling like I am going to topple over at any moment, and sometimes I get very weak. At a recent Saturday vigil, when I was assisting at Mass, I was overcome by weakness. It seemed to start at the top of my head and quickly move like a wave down to my feet. After I proclaimed the Gospel, I was done. Happily, we had a seminarian to assist at Mass who was so gracious to take over my duties while I sat there like a lump in the sanctuary.
The seminarian also escorted me back to the sacristy, where a man came to check on me. He said he was a doctor visiting from Michigan. He asked if I was diabetic. I explained to him that I was not, but that I was a dialysis patient hoping to receive a kidney. Now get this: he told me that he was a former dialysis patient and that he had received a transplant. He told me that he understood exactly the weakness I was experiencing, and that I am going to feel so much better when I get a kidney. Is that not the providence of God, that a doctor from Michigan who had been a dialysis patient and had received a kidney would be there on a Saturday vigil in Knoxville when I was feeling so weak I had to take my leave early?
There are about 100,000 people in the United States awaiting an organ transplant, with 85,000 of them awaiting a kidney transplant. Every eight minutes, someone is added to an organ-transplant list, and there were over 48,000 transplant surgeries in the United States last year. I’m listed on the University of Tennessee Medical Center transplant list, and I’m going down to Erlanger this week to get tested and have interviews in hopes of getting on the transplant list at Erlanger.
People have lots of questions about transplants, from the perspective of the donor and the perspective of the recipient. Is there a financial cost to the donor? What organs can be transplanted? I am 80 years old, surely too old to be a donor, right? Will my medical care be compromised if I become a donor? To answer these and most of the big questions about becoming a donor, whether that be a living donor or an organ donor at death, you can visit the website giftofhope.org and find your way to the Frequently Asked Questions section.
Of course, for Catholics, a big question in becoming an organ donor is: What does the Church teach about Catholics becoming organ donors? In his encyclical Evangelium Vitae, paragraph 86, Pope St. John Paul the Great wrote of “an everyday heroism, made up of gestures of sharing, big or small, which build up an authentic culture of life. A particularly praiseworthy example of such gestures is the donation of organs, performed in an ethically acceptable manner, with a view to offering a chance of health and even of life itself to the sick who sometimes have no other hope.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church states in paragraph 2296: “Organ donation after death is a noble and meritorious act and is to be encouraged as an expression of generous solidarity.” Pope Benedict XVI was a strong advocate for organ donation, and he carried his organ donation card with him every day from the 1970s onward. (Once he became pope, Benedict had to renounce his status as an organ donor, as Church law requires all popes be buried intact). Pope Francis endorsed organ donation as an act of charity.
There are, of course, certain principles that must be kept for an organ donation to be judged by the Church as ethical:
- Free and informed consent must be obtained from the donor or his or her proxy.
- Vital organs, of course, should be removed only after death. The Church accepts the medical profession’s criteria for determining death, including brain death. There has been some concern regarding people diagnosed as brain dead who awoke from their stupor and lived. I fear that much of this is a failure in communication between the doctor and the family.
As a nurse, I experienced this as a regular problem. While doctors think they have communicated adequately to the family, family members may still walk away with a lack of understanding, thinking their loved one is “brain dead” when he or she is not. Their loved one awakens, the family is beside themselves, and someone calls the press and reports that a “brain dead” patient woke up! This is where communication between the doctor and the family is crucial. Brain dead is dead. Also, the dead who are on mechanical instruments that infuse the body with blood are not being “kept alive.” The mechanical instruments continue to infuse their vital organs with blood to keep them healthy until those organs can be harvested for donation.
- The dignity of the donor’s body must be respected. After harvesting the organs, the decedent may and should receive a funeral Mass and burial according to the rites of the Church.
- Organs should be distributed justly, not based on a potential recipient’s wealth or status.
- Buying and selling organs is unethical, as well as illegal. You may have heard of the horror of organ selling in China. China’s human rights record is monstrous, and the Chinese Communist Party is deeply involved in the international black market for organs. Organ transplant hospitals and organizations that support organ donation in the United States are not involved in this illegal and unethical practice in any way. So, no one is participating in the evil of organ selling or buying when working with legitimate and reputable organ-transplant hospitals and the organizations that support them.
Catholics who are organ donors may be interested in developing a devotion to St. Maximilian Kolbe, the patron saint of organ donors. Father Kolbe was a prisoner in the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp. He offered his life that another man might live. Organ donors give a part of their life to save or improve the lives of others.
So, if anybody has an extra kidney lying around, maybe in the junk drawer in your kitchen, and every time you open the drawer and see it you think, “What am I going to do with that?” Just call Deacon Bob, and I’ll take that off your hands. I won’t even ask where you got it. That’ll be between you and God.
Seriously, UT Medical Center handles transplants in the Knoxville area. You can call the hospital and ask for the transplant coordinator, and they’ll be happy to help you. God bless you all, and I appreciate your prayers that I get a kidney soon.
Be Christ for all. Bring Christ to all. See Christ in all.
Deacon Bob Hunt is a husband, father, grandfather, and parishioner at All Saints Church in Knoxville.