When 33-year-old science teacher
Randy Zell returned to Newman School two weeks ago, his students
asked about his original kidneys. The answer is, he kept both
of them. Last month, Tulane University Hospital surgeons transplanted
another one into his left pelvis, near his hipbone, and connected
it to his bladder and blood stream. "I essentially have three
kidneys right now," he says.
Patrick Reagin, now a sophomore, had Zell last year for biology.
"Everybody likes Mr. Zell," Reagin says. And because Reagin
knows Zell, the idea of being an organ donor now seems more
realistic. "I've always been in favor of it," Reagin says, "but
it just kind of seemed far away."
Nationwide, more than 80,000 people are waiting for organs.
Most are waiting for kidneys. Yet young people are donating
fewer organs, says Dr. Doug Slakey, who worked on Zell's transplant
along with Dr. Sandy Florman.
"Over the last decade, the average donor became older and
was less ideal from a health perspective," says Slakey. That's
partly because the death rate is down -- fewer young people
are dying. Still, nationwide, only about half of eligible donors
give permission for their organs to be used.
In Louisiana, permissions from family are always required
even if an accident victim carries a donor card. And when the
victim is young, families are much less likely to give permission.
"It's something none of us want to think about," Slakey says.
The New Orleans-based National Donor Awareness Foundation
will be discussing all of these topics on Monday, Oct. 20, as
teachers and student leaders from more than 50 area schools
gather at Delgado Community College for the Frank Voelker Memorial
Youth Forum on Organ & Tissue Donation. Among the attendees
will be Zell and a few of his students.
In the summer of 2002, Zell -- an active runner and the head
cross-country coach at Newman -- began experiencing chest pains
and shortness of breath whenever he ran. Tests found that the
potassium in his bloodstream was "off the chart," says Zell
-- a sign that his kidneys were not filtering his blood like
they should.
"My kidneys had been good for 30 years," he says, "but we
know that, in diabetics, kidneys get beat up." In lifelong diabetics
like Zell, fluctuating blood-glucose levels can damage kidneys,
eyes, and nerve cells in the hands and feet.
Zell's kidneys failed quickly -- by October, he needed dialysis.
He rolls up his shirt and shows where the needle went, three
days a week for three-and-a-half hours each session. Bulging
out of his skin is a big blood vessel, the result of an artery
that was surgically disconnected from the smaller vessels that
lead to the hand. Always the teacher, Zell shows how his left
hand was often visibly colder than his right as a result of
decreased blood flow.
As soon as he started dialysis, Zell was put on a cadaver
donor list for two organs -- a kidney and a pancreas. A kidney
can also come from a living donor, if the donor matches in blood
type and six genetic markers. Zell, who has no siblings, emphasizes
that relatives might be more willing to donate, but they're
not the only possibilities. "There are complete strangers who
might be a better match than a relative," he says, telling of
an instance where a husband needed a kidney and his wife was
a perfect match.
A few months into dialysis, Zell was awakened at 2 a.m. by
a phone call -- Zell was the second candidate in line for a
pancreas and kidney. He headed down to Tulane University, where
he was put in a room with the No. 1 candidate, an older man.
"It was weird at first," says Zell. "If he had been a jerk,
I would have thought, 'I really want this kidney.' But he was
a good guy." After six hours, the hospital said that the number-one
candidate matched, and so Zell went home.
Not long afterward, Zell found a match in a living donor --
a cousin. "If he had gone on the national (cadaver) waiting
list, Mr. Zell could have had a waiting time for two years or
more," says Slakey. Slakey operated on the cousin and Florman
operated on Zell, concurrently and in adjoining operating rooms
so that the kidney could be removed from the cousin and almost
immediately transplanted into Zell.
This fall, Zell brought more than his new kidney to the classroom.
His anatomy and physiology classes will see actual X-rays, MRIs
and CD-roms of their teacher. The class will not be "a history
of Mr. Zell's medical condition," the teacher says. "But with
everything I did, I'd say, 'Can I have a copy?'"
It may be a few years, but whenever Zell gets the phone call
about an available pancreas, he hopes to get the surgery videotaped
for the class. But he'd also like to focus on a few things outside
the classroom. Some serious traveling, for instance. And running
a marathon again. "That's my dream," he says.
