Later meets man who received kidney from him

by Randy Leonard

    Former Dundalk resident and Dundalk Eagle reporter Court Blatchford always thought he would like to donate an organ. He is designated as a willing donor on his driver’s license, but when he read a story about a 24-year-old woman who needed a kidney to survive, he was compelled to act.
    “She’s just too young to die,” Blatchford said he thought. So in March of last year he attended an information meeting at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
  

Now a resident of the Eastern Shore, Blatchford, 51, lived in Dundalk in the 1980s and worked as a reporter at The Eagle from 1983 to 1987. He is married with two daughters, ages 10 and 13.
    He was not a match for the woman he read about, but Blatchford learned that Hopkins has a waiting list of people in need of a kidney transplant.
    “I just decided to go ahead with it,” he said.
    Anonymous living kidney donations are relatively new – the first was performed in September 1999 at Hopkins, leading to the institution of the Altruistic Donor Program, according to the hospital’s Web site. More than 380 people are on the Hopkins waiting list for a kidney transplant, according to spokeswoman Stephanie Desmon Fey.
    “The hard part was all the testing,” Blatchford said. He gave what  seemed like a couple gallons of blood, did a stress test with an echocardiogram and had a colonoscopy, among other tests. At one point he spent an entire day at Hopkins undergoing tests.
    “They wanted to make sure I was strong enough to do it,” he said. “You have to really want to be a donor.”
    Hopkins officials had explained that after the procedure his remaining kidney would compensate and provide 75 percent of normal kidney function. A person can live on about 10 percent, according to Hopkins surgeon Dr. Dorry Segev, who performed Blatchford's operation.
    His procedure was scheduled for Dec. 22.
    “I was not nervous or apprehensive at all,” he said. He had confidence in Hopkins and the doctors he met.
    Most donors require no medicine or lifestyle changes after recovery. It is “a very low-risk surgery, and your long-term outlook is very good,” he said. “I was so excited I couldn’t wait to do it.”
    Blatchford was in surgery for three hours. After he came to, Blatchford was told that his kidney had been transported to University of Maryland Hospital, where a 63-year-old man was awaiting it. The man had been on dialysis for five years and his health was failing. Without the donated kidney, the man would not have lived much longer, Blatchford was told.
    Hopkins treats donors very well, Blatchford said. He was put up in the VIP suite, the same area presidents and heads of state go for care.
    “It’s not like your regular hospital stay,” he said. Not only did he have a nurse, but a concierge and a waiter. He was scheduled to be released Dec. 24, but a fever kept him in the hospital until Christmas Day. His daughters waited to open their Christmas presents until he got home.
    After a week at home, Blatchford received a telephone call. It was David Feldman, the man who had received Blatchford's kidney.
    “When I heard that voice … it made it very real,” Blatchford said. “That was the best feeling.”
    In 2004, Feldman was diagnosed with cancer in his right kidney, which had to be removed. Doctors found that his left kidney functioned poorly due to restricted blood flow. He had to go on hemo-dialysis, three times a week for three and a half hours each time.
    “I did that for three years,” Feldman said.
    After that, Feldman did peritoneal dialysis at home, walking around with an extra two and a half liters of fluid in him. His doctor told him not to expect a normal life span.
    Feldman’s wife was willing to donate a kidney to him, but they were not compatible.
    “We didn’t share a common blood type,” he said.
    Instead, he and his wife entered the University of Maryland’s Paired Donor program, in which participants become eligible for a kidney transplant when someone donates a kidney in their name.
    Coincidentally, before the surgery, Feldman, who lives about four blocks from where Blatchford works in Annapolis, had read a story in the local newspaper on Blatchford's willingness to donate his kidney.
    Feldman got a call Dec. 15 that a match had been found.
    Riding through snow in a rented four-wheel drive vehicle, Feldman arrived at the University of Maryland Medical Center to await the transplant Dec. 22. His doctor ran a series of tests on the organ.
    “Two hours later, I had a functioning kidney,” Feldman said. Almost immediately his skin, which he described as cadaver-like before the surgery, had a rich crimson hue.
    Two months into an expected three-month recovery, Feldman is walking  half a mile or more each day, he said last month. He takes “at least 20 pills a day … to avoid rejection.”
    Donor surgery takes half as long to recover from, Blatchford said. He did not experience a great deal of pain but did find that he was very weak and tired for six weeks. He could be up and about for only around half an hour before needing to rest.
    He tried going back to his public relations work after a couple of weeks but found he had not regained his energy and spent the next week at home again.
    “It’s only [recently] that I’ve gotten my energy back,” just in time to shovel snow from the major storms, he said last month.
    On Jan. 22, Blatchford and Feldman went to the University of Maryland to meet.
    “We all cried,” he said. The two have exchanged Facebook messages and had lunch together last week.
    Being an organ donor is a “chance to really save someone’s life,” Blatchford said.
    “In donating a kidney, Mr. Blatchford realized an amazing way to directly help another human being in need,” Segev said. “A live donor transplant will on average double someone’s remaining life expectancy.”
    Feldman is of course  grateful to Blatchford, who he calls a “very unique” human being.
•  If interested in learning more about becoming a donor, contact Athlene Henry with Johns Hopkins kidney donor program at 410-614-6604 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .