Being 50 years old this month leads me to a review of "rebirth" of another kind. During the morning of this past Jan. 28, the South Dakota Transplant office called to say they had a kidney from a 44-year-old woman that appeared to be a good match for me. It was the seventh time during my 24 years with kidney disease that I have gotten this sudden, unexpected phone call all transplant hopefuls live for. And each of those seven reflects a unique aspect of the complex world of organ donation.The first call came late one July night in 1981 just moments after I had turned off "The Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson. I had been on the Hennepin County Medical Center transplant list for only 30 days. I could not believe my good luck considering that most hopefuls were waiting up to four or more years for "the call". My friend JR and I raced through the night (and a few stop signs!) from Luverne to Minneapolis. Before long, the surgeon was saying it was a "go" and so I went. Unfortunately, I lost the transplant to unknown causes exactly one month after that rebirth. My second call from a transplant center came in 1987 after six years of dialysis and four years of living in Santa Barbara, Calif. It was during the time when transplant centers provided "beepers" so we would be in direct and constant contact with them. I had left the area that day without my beeper to help a friend move his business, in a town over the mountains and out of reach of a beeper signal. So when UCLA hospital called me that morning, I was nowhere to be found. My friends, who the transplant center called looking for me, were waiting for me when I returned home that afternoon and they rushed me to Los Angeles. This time, the results of a final blood test prevented the transplant.Dialysis continued until April 1992 when, upon leaving the Santa Barbara YMCA, I received a note at the check-in desk that my landlord wanted me to call her immediately. Her news? UCLA had another kidney! Lance Armstrong never pedaled with as much intensity as I found while riding my bike home from the YMCA that day! Another rush to Los Angeles, final blood tests and before long, that year's Easter Day dawned with me under the knife receiving my second kidney transplant. When that Gift of Life finally failed nine years later, I was back living in Luverne and forced onto dialysis once again. Within 18 months, I got "the call" two times. I turned down the first offer (donated kidney was not healthy enough) and with the second possibility went through the day-long waiting process. But that final match proved inappropriate. Number six came on Jan. 4 of this year. Unfortunately, (do you see a pattern where fate plays a role?) I was visiting friends in Pennsylvania. And with time always a factor, I was too far away to be a legitimate candidate. Three-and-a-half weeks later, my seventh call arrived and with it the immediate fantasy of the freedom to eat and drink unencumbered and no more trips to Sioux Falls dialysis. But there is always a flip side to the fantasy and once again the final blood tests indicated unacceptable results. In my home, the sound of a phone ringing is never mundane.
