As a dispatcher for the Lincoln County Communications Center, Melissa McKusic, 35, spends much of her time sending people to help others.
Six weeks ago, she did the helping herself.
On May 4, she was wheeled into a Maine Medical Center operating room where a skilled transplant surgeon removed one of her kidneys and took it across the hall where it was installed in the body of her aunt, Pam Bryant Libby, 59.
“I can’t express in words the feeling of thanks I have for her,” said Aunt Pam.
Now, six weeks later, the two women sat down to talk about their family ordeal, an ordeal that began in Sept. 2008 when Libby went to Florida for vacation.
“I came back and had trouble breathing. I thought it was the heat, so I went to the doctor and he told me my kidneys had failed,” she said.
It seems she had a rare kidney disease that required her to begin dialysis.
The kidneys are two organs about the size of a fist located just below the ribcage in the middle of the back. They are filters, reprocessing machines. Each day, they filter about 200 quarts of blood to filter out two quarts of waste products and water.
Dialysis is a process that uses a machine to filter waste products from the blood.
Libby, who lives in Portland with her husband Randy, a C.P.A. was forced to begin a series of dialysis treatments.
“I went three days a week, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday beginning from 5:30 a.m. to about noon. After the treatment, I was exhausted,” she said. On non-dialysis days, she said she felt pretty good, but was tired.
In addition to the treatments, she was required to follow a strict diet that barred cheese or other dairy products, most vegetables and fruits and wheat.
“The doctor said eggs and hamburger were the best way to get protein. I lived on eggs and hamburgers for one and a half years. If I never see another hamburger…” she said.
At a family Thanksgiving in 2008, Pam told her relatives she was a candidate for a transplant because she was healthy, other than her failed kidneys, of course.
She explained that it is tough to find donors, for they must be a genetic match and from a donor who is healthy and does not smoke or drink.
“I said that is me,” said Melissa. “I live a healthy lifestyle. I’ll do it.”
Last summer, Melissa began a series of extensive tests that included filling out questionnaires and undergoing physical and genetic tests.
“They said they couldn’t believe we were aunt and niece and not siblings or a mother/daughter. We matched perfectly,” Melissa said she was told. “After the first of the year, the transplant coordinator called me and said everything was a match. ‘When do you want to do this?’ she asked. I told her: ‘How about last year.'”
So McKusic called her aunt. “What are you doing on May 4?”
Libby was stunned. “Oh my God, It could really be happening,” she said.
Then she got scared. “I was scared and excited at the same time. I knew another woman from the dialysis center who had had a transplant and she got some sort of fungus and died.”
In addition to her own fears, Aunt Pam was worried for her niece.
“What if something happens and she has kidney failure. What will she do?” wondered the aunt.
McKusic said she never gave the fears a thought.
The two women went to Maine Medical Center in Portland where a pair of surgeons Dr. Robert Hawkins and Dr. James Whiting suited up in adjoining operating rooms.
Sometimes a transplanted kidney does not wake up right away when it is implanted into the new body, explained Libby.
“I called across the hall to Melissa. Make sure your kidney is wide awake,” she said.
Then it was lights out for both women. Three hours of surgery for Melissa, five hours plus for Aunt Pam.
“I woke up and this nurse asked me if I wanted to take a walk. I said sure, I want to see my aunt,” said McKusic.
The nurse helped her shuffle down the hall, with her family in tow, and she walked into her aunt’s room.
“You look healthy. Great,” she told her aunt.
The older woman, who knew the donated kidney woke up on time and was working just fine, said other family members told her how healthy she looked, but she didn’t believe it until Melissa said it to her.
The two women were in the hospital for about a week, then they were sent home to recover.
The two women said they wanted to tell their story to encourage others to consider donating kidneys to help save the lives of others.
Now, everything seems to be working – for both women.
Aunt Pam says she is feeling better than ever, despite a series of drugs she has to take on a regular basis. Last week she drove her daughter back to Boston where she is a pre-med student at Northeastern University.
Best of all, Pam says she is back eating real food – no hamburgers and no eggs. “I eat everything in sight. Oh God, it is wonderful,” she said.
McKusic says she is fine too.
After an unpaid six-week leave of absence, the woman who said she liked to help others, and proved it, will be back at work sitting in front of a complex computerized radio system doing what she likes to do best – helping others in need.
