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« on: April 10, 2007, 10:36:05 am » |
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 Jamie Nader, who suffers from lupus, will receive a kidney from her stepbrother, Leland Guenther, this summer. The disease has damaged Nader's kidneys.
Lupus patient gets transplant of hope and kidney
GROVE CITY, Pa. — For most families, home is where the heart is.
But in the case of a Grove City woman who has battled Lupus for the past six years, home is also where a kidney transplant awaits.
Jamie Nader was diagnosed with Lupus when she was 18 years old.
The lifelong disease, which causes a body’s immune system to attack its own tissue and organs, has dealt severe damage to Nader’s body over the years, especially her kidneys. In response, Nader began a search for a kidney donor in September last year.
According to Nader, in order to have a successful kidney transplant, both the donor and receiver’s blood cells must be able to mix together without any negative reaction.
The donor must also be the same blood type as Nader, type O, and if their cells do not attack each other, then a transplant can be completed, Nader said.
“A blood relative is more likely to be a match,” she added.
But when Nader’s immediate family was tested, not a single one was compatible with her. She said neither of her two brothers’ blood cells would mix with hers, and doctors excluded her mother because she was diabetic.
The next step for Nader was to join a national waiting list for a kidney.
But according to Nader, the average wait time for the organ is two years, and her disease was just “getting worse and worse each passing year.”
Nader had been the list for eight months before she and her stepbrother, Leland Guenther, were tested to see if their blood cells would mix.
“We knew (Leland) wanted to get tested to see if he was a match, but we couldn’t get (Nader) healthy enough to go,” explained Linda Guenther, Nader’s mother.
But after dialysis treatment last month, Nader was finally able to go with Leland to get tested at UPMC Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh.
About a week after the testing, doctors called Leland with surprisingly good news: his blood was a perfect match of Nader’s, and a transplant was possible.
“(Leland) called me and I started to cry,” Guenther said. “I had no clue what to say to him. He was so excited to be doing this and had no second thoughts about it.”
Nader was equally surprised that the two were a perfect match, as she and Leland, also 24, were not related by blood at all.
“I was really excited,” Nader said. “He took it upon himself to get tested and did what he had to do in order to help me.”
Nader said she first met Leland when she was 8 years old, and the two of them have been really close since.
“We’d always do stuff together as kids,” Nader recalled. “He’s also been there for me when I was sick in the hospital, and if I needed anything, he’d help out.”
This has proved true as once again as Leland is more than willing to donate his kidney to his stepsister.
“It’s worth it, considering it’s life-changing for her,” he said.
The kidney transplant is scheduled to take place in June this summer at UPMC Presbyterian Hospital, according to Nader.
She also said she would be going back and forth from her Grove City home to the city hospital for the next four months for testing prior to the operation.
Leland, who lives in South Hills and does construction for a living, will be out of work for two months following the transplant. But he said it was “not much of a sacrifice,” considering everything Nader has gone through.
While Leland does not consider his decision to be a huge sacrifice, he will still have bills to pay for those two months, according to his stepmother.
In order to help him pay his bills, a benefit will be held at the Grove City Sportsman’s Club from 1 to 9 p.m. May 6. The entrance fee is $5 per person, and food and refreshments will be available, according to Nader.
“There will be karaoke, door prizes and raffles,” added Guenther.
Guenther said she got the idea for the benefit from a family friend, Darla Ivancic, who offered to organize the benefit for Nader a year ago.
“Initally, I said, ‘No, we are doing OK,’ but with the transplant coming up, we decided it was a good idea,” Guenther explained.
She said the response from the Grove City community has been “overwhelming so far.”
“We just started a few days ago, and it’s been great,” Guenther said.
Nader also said money not used by Leland would be saved up for medical bills, since the family recently received a letter from her medical provider, Medicare, stating that the company would stop funding Nader’s medicine 36 months after the surgery.
Nader, who is on disability, said her medical bills average about $5,000 a month.
Guenther said she has not had a chance to respond to the letter yet, but hoped Medicare would still be able to cover the bills. Currently, she works three days a week at the Grove City Chevrolet dealership.
According to Guenther, even though Nader was born with the Lupus gene, it laid dormant until she gave birth to her daughter, Lexi, in March 2001.
“She was never sick a day in her life (before giving birth),” Guenther said. “In September (2001), symptoms started showing up, and we had our first diagnosis in January 2002.”
Guenther said doctors first diagnosed her daughter with rheumatoid arthritis, since they did not know what else she could have.
“There was nothing showing up in my bloodwork, and it wasn’t until (doctors) diagnosed my kidney that they figured it was Lupus,” Nader explained.
In the past six years, Nader has faced many obstacles battling the disease, including spending 11 days in a medically-induced coma at UPMC Presbyterian two years ago. She was sick with pneumonia and could not breathe on her own.
Doctors had anticipated the worst.
“I was placed on a ventilator, and my family was called in to the hospital,” Nader recalled. “Doctors did not expect me to make it through the night.”
But with family by her side, Nader was able to pull through and began to breathe on her own again. Guenther called her daughter’s comeback nothing short of a miracle.
In addition, Nader has also suffered heart and brain damage due to the disease and has spent much of the past six years in and out of hospitals.
Nader has also undergone several dialysis treatments, a type of therapy which is used to provide an artificial replacement for lost kidney function.
While Guenther said dialysis has provided a “little bit of normality” in her daughter’s life, it has also been very difficult for her due to the treatment’s side effects.
“(My daughter) is now able to go out, but it’s been awful for her,” Guenther said. “Her arm is now deformed from (dialysis). She cannot wear tank tops due to it. She also lost all her hair and had to wear a wig. She has scars, bumps and bruises and has become very weak and little.”
According to Guenther, when Nader was sick with pneumonia in October 2005, she weighed 159 pounds.
“After she was done with dialysis (last month), she weighed 85 pounds,” Guenther said. “It’s been really tough.”
But her family remains optimistic that the kidney transplant will be a new lease on life for Nader, though she can never completely rid herself of Lupus since it is a lifelong disease.
“I’d give anything to reverse roles with my daughter and it be me (with Lupus),” Guenther said. “But hopefully, this transplant will help out a lot.”
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