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A Spotsylvania man played a key role in the nation's largest kidney exchange Date published: 7/11/2009
BY JIM HALL A surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore removed Thomas Koontz's left kidney June 15. That operation began a chain of surgeries that would last three weeks and involve eight pairs of donors and recipients and 16 kidneys in four cities. When it was completed earlier this week, the exchange was the nation's largest paired-donor kidney swap. Members of the transplant team at Johns Hopkins described Koontz, a 54-year-old resident of Spotsylvania County, as an "altruistic donor," since he was not paired with a recipient. "Koontz basically said, 'I'll donate my kidney to anyone "Thomas essentially starts the dominoes falling," Montgomery added. Koontz--friends call him Dody--is a retired Marine who works now for the Department of Energy. He and his wife, Karen, and their three teens, Sage, Ehren and Ryan, live in the Mineral Springs section of the county. Koontz said he first considered kidney donation after reading in the parish bulletin at St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Spotsylvania that another church member needed a transplant. The church member eventually received a kidney, but Koontz pursued the idea of donating to a stranger in gratitude for his daughter's recovery from brain surgery. "You only need one kidney," he reasoned. Sage Koontz, now a second-year student at the University of Virginia, was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2007 and underwent successful surgery at Mary Washington Hospital in Fredericksburg. "Sage was the inspiration for all this," Koontz said yesterday, recovering at his home. "I was trying to give back to God." Koontz contacted Johns Hopkins last December and began what would be months of scans, tests and interviews. Finally, he got a call from Hopkins officials in early June, saying that he was cleared to be a donor and that a multi-hospital exchange had been arranged to begin two weeks later. Johns Hopkins has been a leader in paired-donation transplants, performing the nation's first in 2001. The procedure combines donors and recipients who are not compatible by blood or tissue with others in the same predicament. On the day of Koontz's surgery, his kidney was removed in the morning and placed inside a stranger, Kathleen Wolstenholme, 52, that afternoon.
What an awesome story.
I think this is one of the most wonderful gifts one person could ever give another.
http://www.newsok.com/kidney-swaps-impact-reaches-across-states-including-oklahoma/article/3384612?custom_click=pod_headline_health
Amazing!!! God Bless You All!!!
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