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MIKE MOORE: The ties that bind spouses
BY MIKE MOORE
Journal Times
Married couples know the cliche “What’s mine is yours” binds them legally. If they picked a keeper, it binds them spiritually.
Not many can say it binds them anatomically. Angie and Don Gapko of Mount Pleasant are about to become the exception.
Next week, surgeons at Froedtert Memorial Lutheran Hospital in Wauwatosa are scheduled to remove one of her kidneys and carefully relocate it to his body. Talk about a whole new level of sharing.
Husband and wife in dual recovery mode isn’t the plan most families would draw up, especially with two younger kids like the ones scurrying around the Gapko house. Plan A bogged down as Don’s blood type lessened the chance of finding a match for a transplant. And, although kidneys functioning at 12 percent sounds ominous, that still leaves him well down the priority list.
“I had a feeling I was,” she told me. “I didn’t know why.”
Tests confirmed it. Suddenly the question shifted from if he’d get a transplant to when.
Don, 38, has held out pretty well since a sixth-grade physical spotted his glomerulonephritis, the disease that prevents his kidneys from cleaning the gunk out of his blood.
He was told he’d need serious treatment within six months. Give or take 27 years. The difference today is the pills that convince the body not to reject an organ are more reliable.
“It’s all in God’s perfect timing that it happened like this,” Angie said.
Even now, outsiders might not notice Don is ailing. While others start to feel sick when their kidneys dip to 20 percent functional, Don’s still in good spirits. Things like chasing the children and fixing up his Mustang do sap his energy more quickly than they used to.
Of the upcoming transplant, he said, “I’m not getting rid of my disease ... but this is probably the best treatment that would happen.”
There are moments in every life that serve as a freeze-frame, giving us a chance to see how devoted our friends really are. You see, Angie wasn’t the only one lining up to help.
“What do you say to someone who says ‘I go to church with you and I’m willing to give up a kidney for you?’ ” Don asked.
Nationally, about one in nine live-donor kidney transplants comes from a spouse. Here, it’s a novelty. A quick check of records at Froedtert and the Medical College showed no such swaps between Racine couples since the transplant program began in the 1960s, although some could’ve been arranged elsewhere.
For the Gapkos, it’s been a stressful ride from no donor stickers on their licenses to informed experts. Knowledge isn’t the only thing Don is accumulating. This will give him three kidneys, because it’s safer for the other two to stay inside him.
He said Angie will actually have the tougher operation.
“You better come visit me,” she teased.
Elements of the donor’s personality tagging along for the ride with a vital organ is more SciFi Channel than WebMD, so it’s unlikely Don will inherit his wife’s sweet tooth. As side effects go, though, he could do worse than a sudden, unexplainable appetite for chocolate.
Mike Moore can be reached at (262) 631-1724 or
mike.moore@lee.net
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