Springdale man celebrates successful kidney transplant

Springdale man celebrates successful kidney transplant

Dale Shaffer of Springdale holds a dialysis filter used to remove impurities from the blood when a person’s kidneys fail. Shaffer spend about 18 months on dialysis before receiving a kidney transplant that has worked perfectly for 40 years.
Dale Shaffer of Springdale holds a dialysis filter used to remove impurities from the blood when a person’s kidneys fail. Shaffer spend about 18 months on dialysis before receiving a kidney transplant that has worked perfectly for 40 years.

Dale Shaffer celebrated his 40th anniversary with friends and family gathered Sunday in his Springdale home. His wife Velma celebrated alongside him.

The couple has been married for 51 years, and it wasn't a wedding anniversary they celebrated.

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Kidneys filter out waste products when the body metabolizes protein and releases the waste as urine, explained Dr. John Hey, a nephrologist with Renal Specialists of Northwest Arkansas in Fayetteville. If the kidneys aren’t working, the blood is not being filtered, and the waste is not being removed.

Dialysis works as an artificial kidney, Hey explained. Blood is pumped out of the body, run through a filter and returned to the body. It takes three to four hours to circulate the blood. With dialysis treatment three times a week, a patient can have a kidney function of 20 percent, he said.

“A kidney works 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but a machine just can’t do that,” Hey said. “But it’s the closest thing we’ve got to the kidneys.

“We can keep a person alive, but it’s hard to thrive by artificial means. And survival is not good on dialysis. A transplant improves the quality of life.”

By the numbers

100,791 — Number of people awaiting kidney transplants as of Jan. 11

3.6 years — Median wait time for an individual’s first kidney transplant

17,107 — Kidney transplants performed in the United States during 2014

1,570 — 2104 transplants from deceased donors

5,537 — 2014 transplants from living donors

SOURCE: National Kidney Foundation

Oct. 6 marked 40 years from the day Dale received a kidney transplant -- one doctors told him would last only seven to 10 years.

SO MUCH UPHEAVAL

Shaffer, now 72, said his kidney problems started when he was a kid living on a cattle and wheat farm in Kansas. He suffered through many kidney infections, and things just kept getting worse. In January 1963, his left kidney quit working and was removed.

Troubles with his right kidney continued, and urologists inserted a tube for better drainage, which included an exterior collection bag for urine, he continued. The tube was replaced every six weeks.

"This was very painful for him, and in addition, he had to drink a full quart of cranberry juice every day to help keep the kidney functioning better," wrote Velma Shaffer in a memoir. "To this day, he is no fan of cranberries in any form."

Later, urologists performed a ureterostomy, creating a bypass of his bladder, which required a leg bag to collect his urine. "I was fine for 10 years with the bypass surgery," Dale said.

The couple was living in Bucklin, Kan., on their 10th wedding anniversary. Then, at age 30, things changed dramatically for the worse.

"It was one Saturday, and we were shopping like any ordinary day," Dale recalled. "I noticed the vision in my left eye was giving me trouble, and I told Velma about it."

Dale went to see his family physician with a blood pressure reading of 220/110. Two doctors later and a 2 1/2-hour drive to the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, Kan., Dale was in the hospital suffering kidney failure. Emergency dialysis was completed through a shunt in his leg, Velma's writing reveals.

"Little did we realize our lives were set to change in extraordinary ways and that 1975 would always be a year etched in our memories," she wrote. "So many questions -- so many decisions -- so much upheaval. Where would we be able to get dialysis performed three times per week? Being 300 miles away from the medical center, the decision was made that we would be set up at home to perform that function after adequate training."

"The first time they taught my wife, she came to see how, but then gave an excuse and turned around," Dale recalled. "It took forever for her to come back, and I thought she might not."

"I didn't know if I could handle all that blood stuff," Velma admitted.

So three nights a week, in a room off their bedroom that had served as a nursery for their two sons, Velma spent 30 minutes setting up the machine and attaching Dale for his four-hour dialysis treatment, which was set to clear three pounds of fluid. During those hours, he would play games, read to his sons and watch football with them. Velma then spent 30 more minutes shutting down the treatment and cleaning the equipment.

"She's been a very, very good nurse," Dale said.

Dale underwent dialysis for 18 months before his transplant, and both he and Velma worked full time during those months.

"You might ask how I felt about that, and all I can say is, 'What choice do we have?'," Velma wrote. "... I never had any interest in being a nurse [she worked with billing and insurance for hospitals.] ... But because I loved my husband so much, I put on my Nurse Nancy hat and went right to work. Every time I put him on the machine, my knees shook, and I had to lean on the Lord to do things right -- especially when I learned all the issues that could go wrong during my support training."

After they took his last kidney out, Dale's intake of fluids had to be minimal because he had no organs to remove it. At one point, he became dehydrated and passed out in his chair. A local emergency crew gave him saline, and he recovered.

"I sat him up and he passed out and his tongue came out," Velma wrote. "I'm yelling, 'You can't do this! You can't do this!"

On another occasion, an animal on a transformer resulted in a power outage in the Shaffers' home. Velma had to use a hand pump to circulate the blood during that day's dialysis treatment. Luckily, the family lived in a small town. Bucklin officials knew the days and times he underwent treatment, restored the power quickly and even came by to check on Dale.

"... Life just happened day-by-day, and KU started visiting with him about a family transplant, and the process began seeing who would be a good donor," Velma continued.

MATCH GAME

"Luckily, Dale was from a large family," Velma said Sunday after the celebration. His six siblings were given kits to test their blood for a match. Two older brothers, Elvis and Carl, proved to be healthy matches. Carl, seven years older, who lived in California, was chosen as the donor.

"I didn't think much about [losing a kidney to his brother]," said Carl Shaffer. "And he's taken pretty good care of it."

Carl Shaffer, 79, who now lives in Clearwater, Kan., came to Dale's anniversary celebration with his wife, Angie. Carl said he believes a vision one night put him at ease.

"Someone was in the room, and touched my left side under the covers," Carl told his story. "It was real warm. And I knew [the donor] was going to be me, and it was going to be my left kidney.

"And this was even before I had taken the blood kits," he said.

"A lot of people thought I should not give the kidney," Carl added. "My [first] wife was going blind, and I was jeopardizing two families, they said. But I never told anyone about the vision."

After some wrangling of Carl's busy life as a real estate agent and softball coach for teens, the men were lying in adjacent operating rooms at the hospital. In fact, as he was being wheeled to surgery, Dale saw through glass doors the doctors working on his brother to harvest the kidney.

When the kidney was harvested, a nurse just carried the kidney from one room to another, Dale said. "They hooked the kidney into the renal artery, I was completely done before they were through with Carl."

"The morning arrived, and Dale's family gathered to sit with me as I waited for news from Dr. Pierce," Velma wrote. "When he came out beaming, he said, 'The kidney is doing great, and he started putting out urine right on the operating table.'"

"I started crying and cried for two hours straight," Velma said. "His family said, 'You should be happy,' and I said, 'I am happy.'"

During the nearly two years, Velma had stood strong. "I knew how much depended on me -- fixing meals, ordering supplies, keeping the kids happy, keeping Dale happy with both of us working full time and keeping a stiff upper lip. Well, that morning the stiff upper lip was quivering with sheer joy and immense relief."

Dale woke up in isolation two days after the surgery to see his family members looking at him through a glass window. "I gave them a thumbs up," he said.

Some 20 days after the transplant, Dale was set for release, but they found a spot on his lung.

"The immune system was rejecting the kidney," he said. "It was completely shut down. If I had gone on three more days, they would have put me back on dialysis.

"That night we had a very good prayer time with the Lord," he continued.

Dale said he believes a spirit also visited him that night. "I couldn't see him, but I could feel his presence," Dale said. "And the next morning, the kidney was functioning at 100 percent.

"The Good Lord Jesus was involved in the whole process -- and he still is."

BLESSED

For 40 years, Dale has been living his life. The Fayetteville barber is semi-retired -- working just 44 hours a week, down from 66, at a job he loves, his wife said.

"I've been very blessed," Dale said. "They told me I'd be an invalid. They said in seven to 10 years I'd need another transplant and be back on dialysis. I know of others' [transplants] who didn't last that long or lasted only that long."

Despite medical advances, doctors keep Dale on the same two anti-rejection drugs he was given in 1975 -- Immuna and Prednisone.

When Dale Shaffer received his transplant 40 years ago, "there were only two drugs to suppress the immune system," said Dr. John Hey, Dale's nephrologist with Renal Specialists of Northwest Arkansas in Fayetteville. "But they weren't very powerful. You had a 50 percent of rejection in that first year after the transplant, even if the kidney came from a highly matched, first-degree relative.

"But if you didn't reject it in that first year, you are home free. The kidney functions completely normally."

Hey continued to say that with the current drug Cyclosporine, the chance of rejection in the first year is less than 1 percent.

"Cyclosporine is a miracle drug, but it is hard on the vascular system of the kidneys," he said. "After 15 to 20 years, it wears out, it tires out." At which point, patients return to dialysis or receive another kidney transplant. Hey said he has a patient that has undergone three transplant procedures.

Today's kidney transplants are must easier for the donors. In Carl Shaffer's day, to take out a kidney, doctors would cut into a patient's back and maybe take out a rib, leaving an incision that ran nearly halfway around the donor's body.

But Carl doesn't remember any trauma. He was walking the day after surgery.

"But I asked the doctor, 'Where's my woman?'" Carl said. "Adam had a rib removed and got a woman. Where's mine?"

Today, that removal of a kidney can be performed laparoscopically, Hey said.

"But the donor still has a harder course," he said. "The recipient begins to feel better immediately with a working kidney."

Other advances in the 40 years since Dale Shaffer's transplant ensure closer matches with donors and transplant recipients and specific induction immunotherapy given at the time of the transplant.

Hey said Shaffer's situation is remarkable. The doctor lists only one other patient in his practice living with a long-term kidney transplant.

"Dale is the exception to the rule," Hey continued. "He's lucky in the fact that he did not reject the kidney early. It might go on forever. He might not even need anti-rejection drugs because he was so well matched, but nobody has ever been brave enough to stop them."

Dale Shaffer said sees Hey once a year for a blood workup.

"The last time I was there, the doctor said that kidney was in there to stay, and it's going to be there another 40 years. Our Lord has really blessed us."

NAN Our Town on 10/13/2016

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