Norfolk donor meets stranger whose life she saved

In the world of organ transplants, there’s a term for people like Christy McGinnity: Good Samaritan donors.

They offer a kidney – not to a brother, a mother, a friend or spouse, but to someone they don’t even know.

McGinnity, a 39-year-old Norfolk woman, first considered the idea more than a year ago after reading a newspaper article. She made good on the offer a few weeks ago at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, where she donated her kidney to Regina Davis, a 49-year-old woman from Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

In turn, Davis’ daughter donated one of her kidneys Thursday to a stranger in St. Louis , whom she’s a better match for than she would have been for her mother.

They’re each hopeful the chain of donations will continue to unfold to others in need of kidneys. “God is written all over this thing,” Davis said.

These types of organ operations are sometimes known as “paired kidney exchanges” or “kidney chains.” There have been cases in which more than 20 people have received new kidneys as a result.

It works like this: Donors and recipients who are poor matches with their own relative or loved ones agree to swap organs with another pair to create more compatible matches. Johns Hopkins did the first paired exchange transplant in the United States in 2001. More than 900 people across the country have received kidneys through such arrangements since then.

Sometimes the surgeries are done simultaneously, to keep donors from backing out of the agreement, but in cases where someone is willing to give a kidney to a stranger, it can be done in a chain of transplants.

That idea has given rise to more donors like McGinnity – also called anonymous or altruistic donors, many of whom were inspired by others who donated their organs without knowing the recipient.

In 1999, there were five such donors, a number that grew to 141 last year, according to a federal organ network.

So far this year, about 70 people with big hearts and kidneys to spare have stepped forward.

McGinnity is one of them.

Her story began in June of 2009, when she read an article in The Virginian-Pilot about Lauraleigh Devey.

Devey grew up in Norfolk, and had moved to Maryland. She had developed a rare kidney disease and needed a new kidney to live. She made a plea to the public for one, explaining that the surgery is done laproscopically – in which instruments are inserted in four small incisions – and that the person’s medical bills are usually paid for by the recipient’s insurance. The donor stays in the hospital a couple of days.

“I’ve just got to believe there is somebody out there who’d love the idea of giving someone a second chance at life,” she was quoted as saying.

There was.

“I didn’t even finish the article,” McGinnity said. “I picked up the phone and called Johns Hopkins. I got caught up in the moment. I didn’t look at it as a big deal. It’s a kidney. God gives you two kidneys, and you can live with one.”

She had blood work done locally during the next few weeks. About a month later, she was told she wasn’t a match for Devey. She was disappointed, but the donor coordinator asked if she wanted to stay on the list.

She did.

“It bothers me that I went 39 years without doing it. I could have helped someone years ago.”

McGinnity, a single mother of two, had worked as a medical assistant in the past and was taking classes at a local medical careers school to become a registered nurse. At the time, she was working as a private investigator.

Months passed. In mid-July, her phone rang.

They found a match for her.

“I felt like I won the lottery,” McGinnity said.

The hospital’s policy required she not know anything about the recipient until after the surgery, and then only if the recipient agreed to meet.

As time went on, McGinnity grew nervous, but her resolve never faltered. She had a battery of medical tests, and provided blood and tissue samples at different points leading up to the August surgery. She decided to get in touch with the woman who inspired her to donate.

Through Facebook, she hooked up with Devey, and found out she had received a kidney in September of 2009 from a woman in Annapolis, who, like McGinnity, was an anonymous donor giving because she knew there was a need. A friend of Devey’s, in turn, donated one of her kidneys to someone in Canada.

Devey, 52, was so appreciative of McGinnity donating a kidney that Devey told her she’d make the two-hour drive from her home to Johns Hopkins on the day of the surgery.

Meanwhile, Regina Davis and her family were hoping and praying that the donor, whom they knew nothing about, would stick with her plan. Davis, who has heart disease and diabetes, had been on blood-cleansing dialysis since 2008, when her kidneys failed.

Every day, seven days a week, she hooked herself up to a machine for 10 hours.

She has two daughters, one a 30-year-old mother who is stationed with the Army in Iraq. Davis had been caring for her children, ages 6, 8 and 10, since June.

Davis’ other daughter, 27-year-old Tiffany Robinson, is stationed with a Navy construction battalion in Port Hueneme, Calif.

Neither was a good match for their mother, but it was decided that Robinson would donate a kidney. Since Robinson had a different blood type than her mother, Davis would have to go through a process called plasmapheresis, in which antibodies would be removed from her blood before surgery.

They were making plans for that procedure when Davis received a phone call in July from her donor coordinator, telling her there was a better match.

Davis was stunned. “I thought, 'How could there be a better match than someone I gave birth to?’ ”

She also wondered who would be willing to donate a kidney to someone they didn’t know.

“What’s in it for her?” thought Davis, who lives in Berlin, Md. “Who would do this for a perfect stranger?”

She was intrigued but tried not to get too excited: “I thought it was too good to be true.”

She talked to her daughter to ask how she would feel if her kidney went to someone else, someone she didn’t know.

Robinson was fine with it.

“This is more of a blessing because more people will benefit than just me giving to her,” she said.

McGinnity’s kidney was transplanted into Davis on Tuesday, Aug. 24. When McGinnity woke up in the recovery room, Devey was there to greet her.

“I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you,” McGinnity told her.

Davis and McGinnity took Aug. 25 to recuperate, but by the next day, they wanted to meet. By then, both knew the kidney was showing signs of working.

“We both looked at each other and the first thing we did was cry,” Davis said. “It was tear city.”

They exchanged e-mails and phone numbers and promises to stay in touch. They didn’t just share a set of kidneys, but a feisty spirit and a sense of gratefulness.

“I feel very blessed that I could help her,” McGinnity said.

McGinnity was discharged from the hospital three days after the surgery, but had to return Thursday because of an infection. She said she hopes her donation will raise awareness about the need for organs. A friend of hers, 37-year-old John Groover of Virginia Beach, is in need of a kidney, and she hopes her story will inspire others to donate.

There are 86,000 people on the list in the United States; 6,730 received kidneys this year.

Besides the Johns Hopkins paired donation program, there have been other networks created to make the same kinds of matches. Sentara’s transplant program listed its first paired exchange donor and recipient in the National Kidney Registry in July, but hasn’t participated in one yet.

Laurie Reece, executive director of the Alliance for Paired Donation, said that Ohio-based network of transplant centers formed in 2006 and is one of six across the country. She said the advent of paired kidney exchanges has increased the number of people willing to donate an organ to someone they don’t know. When a story about a Good Samaritan donor ran in People magazine last November, the organization received 300 phone calls from people interested in donating kidneys.

Not every one followed through, but enough did to change, and even save, lives.

“Some people didn’t know you could be a living donor; they thought you had to be dead,” Reece said. In fact, kidneys from living donors usually begin working more quickly and last longer.

Davis was discharged from Johns Hopkins on Thursday, the same day her daughter donated her kidney, which was flown to St. Louis for a transplant there. Because of privacy laws, she won’t know anything about that patient unless the recipient agrees after the surgery.

Davis will stay in the Baltimore area a few weeks before going home to start the new life made possible by McGinnity. “Seventy hours a week I spent hooked up to a machine in order to live,” she said. “Will this change my life? Yes. I told her she is my sister, and I will always have a part of her. She’s given me a second chance at life.”

Elizabeth Simpson, (757) 446-2635, elizabeth.simpson@pilotonline.com