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Author Topic: The gift of love: A husband. A wife. A bad kidney. A happy ending.  (Read 2398 times)
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« on: February 14, 2007, 12:39:21 pm »


TY AND MICHELLE MARTIN: In side-by-side four-hour operations, Ty's right kidney became Michelle's.

The Martins at home

The gift of love: A husband. A wife. A bad kidney. A happy ending.



When he was 16, Ty gave Michelle his heart. When he was 24 and she 23, they married, and started living happily ever after.

Then lupus, a disease that attacks the organs, struck Michelle. She was put on chemotherapy and dialysis and nearly died. For years Ty stuck with her, doing laundry, cleaning house, taking care of her.

At 32, he gave Michelle an even more loving gift. His right kidney. Now the Martins are pregnant, and back at work on their happy ending.

Michelle will talk about Ty for hours.

``He's my hero.''

Ty, a man of few words, sums it up in three.

``I love her.''

Such a Valentine's Day story: They met when she was 15, he 16, both at South Broward High School. She had noticed his ''tiger eyes,'' as she calls them. So when she missed the bus home one day because she'd been in detention for being late, she cornered him for a ride home. And asked for his phone number.

``I was the aggressor; he's so shy.''

Yes, it was love at first sight: ''In the 18 years since, we haven't been apart,'' she says.

It was a typical courtship. They went to each other's senior proms and graduated a year apart. She worked at Burger King, then a yogurt shop, later as a receptionist at a hospital. He worked at Bennigan's. Both got two-year degrees from Broward Community College, both started but didn't finish bachelor's degrees at Florida Atlantic University.

She was 19 when they moved in together, 22 when he proposed on a romantic evening at Vizcaya, 23 when they married.

``We bought our first house when I was 25. We were planning to have a baby. Six months later I got sick.''

At 26, in a routine medical exam, she was stunned to be diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), a chronic inflammatory disease in which the body's immune system attacks its own tissues and organs -- creating extreme fatigue, often damaging the kidney.

``I didn't even feel bad. But six months later I was tired, swollen and anemic. I was on chemotherapy, dialysis and steroids. It made my face swell -- I had a lollipop head.''

From 1999 to 2003 she was in and out of work, on and off chemotherapy and dialysis. ``I went to dialysis Monday, Wednesday and Friday for four hours. And you can't do anything before or after because you're too tired.''

Through it all, Ty was there.

'I said, `My God, you're going to leave me.' He said, 'You're crazy.' ''

In March 2003, on her 30th birthday, her doctor delivered even worse news: She needed a new kidney.

Michelle went to the UM/Jackson Transplant Center, but doctors there couldn't put her on their transplant list because her health wasn't up to such an operation.

``If you're too sick, they won't list you.''

From October 2003 to January 2004 she was in Broward hospitals, undergoing three surgeries due to infections -- first Staphylococcus, then its antibiotic-resistant form called MRSA, for Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus.

''I lost my spleen and my large intestine; for a year I had an ileostomy,'' she said. In the ileostomy procedure, part of her intestine was removed and she was given a surgically created opening to empty waste into an external bag.

``I ended up on a ventilator. I was in a medically induced coma for eight weeks. I had 80 transfusions because my blood wouldn't clot.''

She exceeded the $2 million limit on her private health insurance, had to go on Medicare and Medicaid.

Even after release from the Broward hospitals, with her ileostomy reversed, she fought her illness for a year, getting around with a walker, too weak to work. Fighting to get well enough for a transplant, she forced herself to go to the gym, even on dialysis days.

``I had to build myself up.''

In January 2005, Michelle was well enough to get on UM/Jackson's transplant list. Then came the wait. Three times she got the phone call to come in for a potential match, once at 4:30 a.m. All false alarms.

All along, Ty had been offering his own kidney for her. At first doctors rejected him because he had a bit of protein in his urine as well. But finally Ty was cleared. Immediately he was on the phone with the UM/Jackson Transplant Center.

The center put Ty through rigorous tests, a class for transplant donors, even psychological screening to be sure he could handle the pain and danger.

On July 12, 2005, the day before the planned transplant surgery, the hospital called. Another kidney was available.

'I told Ty, `Hey, you don't have to do this.' He said, 'It's my life, too, and we've waited long enough. Even if I were just your friend, knowing what you've gone through, I would want to do it.' ''

In side-by-side four-hour operations, Ty's right kidney became Michelle's.

''They rolled me out of the operating room and woke me up. I was such a veteran that I immediately said, `Where's my pain medicine?'' I could even tell them what kind and how much.

'Ty was there too, and he said, `I can hear you. Quit your bitchin'.' ''

``I was so happy.''

Michelle's new kidney kicked in immediately, producing urine within 10 minutes of being attached.

``The next day I went to the bathroom for the first time in three years.''

Even before they left the hospital, Michelle and Ty were talking to her kidney doctor, UM nephrologist Dr. Warren Kupin, about getting pregnant. They were told to wait a year, until she could ease off on the powerful anti-rejection drugs she was taking for her transplant.

In a year and two months, they were pregnant, and now await the April 20th arrival of little Jake. She invites the public to visit her pregnancy blog at babiesonline.com/babies/m/michelleandty/ to see Jake's eight-month sonogram, and Ty mugging in ersatz surprise upon reading the pregnancy test monitor.

''She told me to make a funny face; I didn't know she was going to put it all over the Net,'' he grumps. Michelle says she's telling her story now to help others in her position.

``I want to give people hope, because I didn't have any. I was only 26, I was supposed to be able to travel, buy a bigger house, finish college, have kids. I didn't get to do that.

Kupin, her doctor, agrees.

''It is a miracle,'' he said. ``And it's good that the public will hear that her husband donated the kidney. Anti-rejection drugs are so good now that you don't have to be blood-related any more.''

With patients routinely waiting three or four years for a donated kidney, he said, it's crucial to let potential donors know they can donate even as strangers.

Still, risks remain. Michelle, who turns 34 next month, knows that having a baby puts stress on her body, which could cause problems with her new kidney. And Kupin says even the best new kidney will last only 20 years or so -- meaning she may need another new kidney in her 50s.

''There are many people out there on their second kidney, and some even on their third or fourth,'' Kupin says. ``As drugs improve, we hope to extend the warranty.''

Says Michelle: ``I'm not too worried. Once you've been through it, it's not so scary.

``Anyway, you've got to do what you've got to do to live.''







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