An amazing day in the life of a family

On Aug. 1, 2001, my wife Ann, who had been on kidney dialysis for a year, had a kidney transplant. Thanks to her sister Ona, who donated the kidney, and to the wonderful doctors and nurses at the University of Minnesota Transplant Center, Ann, then 46, had a new kidney and a new lease on life. A few weeks later, she received a new pancreas from an unnamed deceased donor. The circle was complete.

Ann, and to a lesser extent, the rest of our family, went from hanging by a thread physically and emotionally to being able to appreciate once again the small pleasures of life. No more dialysis. No more insulin shots. No more insulin reactions. A life centered around the family and not constant visits to the doctor or the urgent care clinic or the emergency room.

When I met Ann in her mid-20s, she was a runner, a biker, a touch football player and a cross-country skier. Four years later, when she was 29, she was diagnosed with Type I, or insulin-dependent diabetes, the kind that children get. Her grandfather had died of the disease and then it skipped a generation and out of the blue struck his strong and athletic granddaughter.

For many years Ann managed her diabetes with daily insulin shots, careful attention to diet and frequent visits to the doctor. We traveled overseas, lived in Washington, D.C., for a couple years, lived an active life and traveled to China to adopt our oldest daughter Sadie. But after 13 years, the disease, which ravages the body's small blood vessels, began to take its toll. In late 1997, Ann fell down the stairs, injuring her ankle. Because she didn't have good feeling in her feet as the result of the diabetes, she was able to get around and didn't think it was broken. The ankle healed improperly and later required surgery to repair. She now wears a brace to hold the ankle in place.

Her body began to give in to the diabetes in the spring of 1998. She was in an out of the hospital that spring for 10 weeks. But her spirits were buoyed one day when I brought a two-inch square picture of our soon-to-be daughter Evie to the hospital emergency room. By the end of the summer, there we were in Hanoi, Vietnam, getting our four-month old daughter. Ann, still wearing a walking cast, braved six lanes of motorcycle traffic in each direction to cross busy Hanoi intersections.

The exhilaration of having another child could not stop the onslaught of the diabetes. Ann developed eye problems, heart problems and, eventually kidney problems. She had to stop working as a psychologist. Her kidneys were failing and the doctor said the only thing she could do was to go on dialysis. So three times a week for a year she traveled to downtown St. Paul or to a clinic wherever we might be and had a machine purify her blood because her kidneys could not. While a life-saving procedure, dialysis makes you feel awful for a period of time afterwards. But Ann is a brave person and she kept going day after day and treatment after treatment, knowing that the dialysis was keeping her alive. She also knew that a new kidney would change her life.

She wrote to her 10 brothers and sisters asking that they consider helping. Her sister Ona, two years older, who was living in Los Angeles at the time, stepped forward and for that we are eternally grateful. It was the gift of life and a potent sign of love. The surgery was scheduled after Ann and Ona went through a series of tests. The doctors were hoping that a pancreas would turn up so they could do the transplants simultaneously. But that didn't happen.

The kidney surgery and later the pancreas surgery were successful. The organs are working. Ann takes two dozen pills a day to make sure her body doesn't reject the organs. The transplants can help stop the deterioration that was taking place in her body, but they can't undue all the damage that had already been done. Ann is living as normal a life as can be expected, eight years after receiving two new organs.

Our girls, then six and three, are now 14 and 11, and barely remember Ann going through dialysis. They never knew Ann when she was a runner and a skier and a biker.

Beyond the obvious personal impact on our lives, her health and her transplants have affected the way we think about issues. For example, we believe in the importance of stem cell research to find a cure for diseases like diabetes, we believe in the importance of funding scientific research on diabetes and other diseases and we believe in the need for health care reform so that people like Ann cannot be discriminated against for pre-existing conditions.

When television plays the old tape of announcer Al Michaels at the 1980 Olympics screaming about the U.S. hockey team's improbable victory, "Do you believe in miracles," at our house we yell, "Yes." But we're thinking about a different miracle, the one that happened on Aug. 1, 2001.