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Fate deals Iowa couple a double dose of crushing news
and, in the end, stirring relief
The Gary and Rosemary Gavin household bears few reminders
of Oct. 1, 2002.
An unusually warm Tuesday to most, it was a blur of pain,
restrained joy, and, finally, great relief to the Gavins,
who live in Iowa City, Iowa.
That early autumn day, both Gary and Rosemary lay in
operating suites at University of Iowa Hospitals and
Clinics, filled with uncertainty.
"It was terrible but good all at once," Rosemary said of
her and her husband's kidney operations--his to have one
removed, hers to receive a transplant. They had planned it
another way. Gary would donate a kidney to Rosemary and help
relieve her of kidney failure resulting from lupus, a
condition she has lived with for more than 22 years.
But Gary Gavin was not donating an organ to his wife on
October 1. Six weeks earlier, an MRI had derailed their
carefully laid plans. The test, the third of three
evaluations Gary needed to become a donor, revealed that the
44-year-old software developer had renal cell carcinoma, a
form of cancer found on his right kidney.
"I was floored," said Gavin, who had easily passed the
first two donor tests--blood type match and acceptance of
the donor's tissue. "Things had been going so well to that
point."
Gavin answered the phone when Howard Winfield, M.D., a
professor of urology, called with the news. Rosemary Gavin
recalls that her husband looked toward the floor and spoke
quietly. "I could tell it was bad," she said. "I thought he
wouldn't be able to donate, which was bad enough, but never
did I think he might be sick."
News both crushing and hopeful found its way into
Winfield and Gavin's conversation that night. People Gary's
age die of renal cell carcinoma. However, with surgery,
there was a 90 percent chance of beating the disease because
it was found in its early stages, Winfield said.
"Surgical treatment is the best way to cure his
condition," he said. "There is no chemotherapy or radiation
that reliably works for renal cell carcinoma. Had he not
been so generous to his wife, we never would have found the
cancer this early."
Rosemary had known her whole adult life that she would
eventually need a transplant and had hoped that Gary would
be the one to provide a donor kidney. She felt uncomfortable
with the idea of someone else having to undergo the months
of screenings, doctors appointments, and ultimately, the
loss of a major organ.
Then came another fateful call. In the evening hours of
September 30, as Gary was preparing for an 8:30 a.m. removal
of his kidney, Rosemary received a call from the organ
transplantation program at University of Iowa Hospitals and
Clinics. A donor match had been found.
"The timing was bizarre, but perfect," she said.
The Gavins hurried to UI Hospitals and Clinics, waiting
several hours for doctors to perform a cross match between
the kidney to be transplanted and Rosemary's own. Soon
afterward, both draped in hospital gowns, they walked into
the pre-surgical unit together as Gary went off to surgery.
About six hours later, Rosemary would do the same.
Winfield removed Gary's right kidney using laparoscopic
surgery, a procedure that requires only small incisions and
allows for a quicker recovery.
"Cosmetically, it's like night and day," Winfield said,
comparing a laparoscopic procedure to conventional surgical
removal of the kidney. "Most procedures would leave him with
three to six months recovery."
Gary left the hospital thirty-six hours after his
operation.
Stephen Rayhill, M.D., performed Rosemary's three-hour
transplant after which she experienced immediate kidney
function.
"I was so happy," Rosemary said. "I was awake, alive,
there were people I loved."
Gary put it more concisely.
"We were two for two."
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