Brought together by chance, connected forever by a kidney

After e-mail appeal, woman donates organ to area teen

Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2006

In 1988, David Slovin was a healthy 5-month-old on a flight from his native Korea to the United States, where he would begin his life with his adoptive parents, Malcolm and Janet Slovin, in Silver Spring.

That same year, Kimberly Blanchard was a young woman just two years out of college — single, beginning a career in public relations at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, also living in Silver Spring.

Their lives would not intersect until June of this year, when Blanchard received an e-mail: David, a 17-year-old Montgomery Blair High School senior with plans to study history in college, had been stricken with kidney disease and needed a donor. The wait on a national list could be as long as three years.

The e-mail made an immediate impression on Blanchard, now a Germantown resident, full-time piano teacher and married mother of two children and four stepchildren.

‘‘I knew I was the same blood type, and it mentioned that David is in Silver Spring, and that’s where I grew up. It mentioned Blair High School, and that’s where I graduated from. And it said that he was from Korea, and my father’s family is Korean, so there were several similarities,” Blanchard said.

Blanchard is a registered organ donor but was not aware it was possible to donate while still alive. She wanted to find out about the risks, and soon learned that that a healthy donor can live a normal life with just one kidney.

‘‘[The surgery] is a very, very small, [with a] negligible level of risk to the donor,” said Dr. Asha Moudgil, medical director of the Kidney Transplant Program at Children’s National Medical Center. She said the procedure is relatively common. At Children’s, about 700 kidney transplants are done each year involving children under age 21, and nationally, Moudgil said, 28,107 transplant surgeries were performed last year.

What is fairly unusual, Moudgil said, is receiving an organ from an unrelated living donor. ‘‘It happens, but it isn’t common,” she said. ‘‘The vast majority are either living, related donors or they are from the list — deceased organ transplants.”

To Blanchard, the fact that David was not a friend or relative was not a primary factor in her decision to donate a kidney.

‘‘It really didn’t matter to me that it was somebody I didn’t know,” Blanchard said. ‘‘What mattered was I found out that there was this person out there with this need and I knew there was something I could do to help him — it just felt like, why wouldn’t I? If it was a minimal risk to me and it could free him from dialysis, then why not?”

Signs of trouble

In January, David Slovin first began to show signs that something was wrong.

‘‘He did not complain. He’s a fairly stoic kid, but we noticed some things,” Malcolm Slovin said. ‘‘He would come home and go to sleep in the afternoon, which was not like him.” His hands shook.

‘‘I thought maybe he was drinking too much caffeine,” Janet Slovin said.

A doctor ran a routine blood test. It was the next day that the Slovins found out the gravity of the situation, when they were told to go directly to Children’s Hospital.

‘‘The doctor came out and said, ‘Well, I’m sorry, but I have to tell you that David is in renal failure,’ ” Janet Slovin said. ‘‘I thought I was going to pass out. I couldn’t believe it. ... It was astonishing.”

A sonogram revealed that David had been born with only one kidney. While an adult can lead a normal, healthy life with only one kidney, the Slovins learned that David’s kidney had not developed normally in proportion to his body. At age 17, the kidney was failing.

David started to feel better once he began dialysis, a process in which a machine provides the blood filtration normally performed by a kidney. While dialysis temporarily restores the correct chemistry in the blood, it is exhausting, and it also removes nutrients from the bloodstream, Janet Slovin said.

‘‘The first kind of dialysis I did, I had to go to the hospital three times a week,” David said. ‘‘I felt better; I had a little more energy on the dialysis. Then in the spring I switched to a dialysis that I could do at home.” A machine filtered his blood while he slept.

‘‘His hair thinned out,” Janet Slovin said. ‘‘His skin broke out. And he got really thin ... his blood pressure was all messed up.”

Making the decision

David needed a kidney transplant, but waiting on a national list to receive a kidney from a deceased donor was ‘‘simply not an option,” said Malcolm Slovin. ‘‘... What I decided is I would use the ‘Net and go out to every community I could find. ... Of all the communities, it was the adoption agency that was most receptive. They put it everywhere and they sent it out to everyone.”

Adoption Service Information Agency, or ASIA, which the Slovins used to adopt David 17 years before, included David’s story in its online newsletter, which was passed along to Blanchard by a friend who had also used ASIA to adopt her child.

Kimberly Blanchard subsequently underwent a series of medical tests to determine whether or not she was a strong candidate, and she also had a psychological evaluation.

After the testing was over, Blanchard got the approval Aug. 18.

‘‘Even though I knew that’s what it was all leading up to, it was still a little bit of a surprise to get that phone call,” Blanchard said. ‘‘I had to call the coordinator a couple hours later just to let it sink in a little bit.”

Blanchard decided to go forward with the surgery, and a few days later, she met David and his parents.

‘‘It was interesting to meet her, because she was someone I didn’t know and who didn’t know me,” David said. ‘‘I didn’t think that the donor would be someone I would ever actually get to meet.”

Blanchard said that it felt wonderful to meet the family. ‘‘It was really emotional,” she said. ‘‘I’m a mother, too, and I was identifying with Janet. Her eyes filled up and I was just so happy that it was all working out for them, and I was able to do something to help them.”

Blanchard and David underwent the transplant surgery Aug. 28 at Children’s National Medical Center.

After the surgery, the change in David’s energy level became apparent. ‘‘Within three weeks, he was bounding up the stairs,” Janet Slovin said, smiling.

David Slovin had to return to the hospital twice a week for several weeks to regulate the medicines in his system, but his father said by the time David starts college, he would only have to return once every two months, and continue for the rest of his life.

Looking ahead

David Slovin will start school at Salisbury State University in January, where he will study military history. As for Blanchard, the surgery — a minimally invasive laparoscopic procedure involving three tiny incisions to separate the kidney from the body, and a single two- to four-inch incision to remove the organ — didn’t slow her for long.

‘‘I was back to work in two weeks. I could have gone back in one week, but I took the extra time,” Blanchard said. ‘‘The surgery itself was a breeze. ... In a couple days everything was feeling pretty good. I feel normal now and I’m doing everything I did beforehand. I can’t tell that anything has been done. ... Physically I feel exactly the same.”

Blanchard said that since the surgery, she has become very close to the Slovins.

‘‘We’re all family now ... we keep in touch at least once a week,” she said. ‘‘I’ve got this new, different awareness of this huge need that I never really paid attention to or knew existed.”

Public awareness of kidney donation has increased recently with the publicity surrounding the quintuple kidney transplant performed at Johns Hopkins on Nov. 14. The procedure was made possible in part by a woman who, like Blanchard, was an altruistic donor — a person willing to donate a kidney to someone she didn’t know.

Blanchard remains profoundly affected by her decision to donate to David. ‘‘I think about it quite often and I think about it terms of how do you spread the word ... how do I relate my experience to other people in hopes that somebody else would get evaluated and take that step as well. ... Why not step out of the box to help somebody you don’t know?”

‘‘I told Kim she gave me two gifts,” Janet Slovin said, her eyes glistening. ‘‘She gave me my son back, and she restored my faith in mankind.”