Kidney Transplant

Philip M. Restivo Sr., 59, cemetery plot salesmanPhilip Marion Restivo Sr., a salesman, died of cancer Sept. 22 at the home of a daughter in Ellicott City. He was 59.He sold cemetery plots for Stewart Enterprises and worked at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Glen Burnie. Earlier, he worked with his father, Philip P. Restivo, owner of the old Baltimore Motor Coach Co. on West Biddle Street, and served in the Marine Corps in the early 1960s.The Baltimore native graduated from Forest Park High School.

If you are a Marylander in need of a kidney, your long wait might have become longer.The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), a national group that directs organs to hospitals around the country, has imposed sanctions on Maryland transplant centers because of a large "kidney debt" incurred in the state.The average state owes UNOS less than a half-dozen kidneys in return for organs received. Maryland -- home to two of the most successful kidney transplant centers in the nation, University of Maryland Medical Center and Johns Hopkins Hospital -- has a debt of 57 kidneys.

"I'm thankful for every day," says Michael Jessup Jr.Two days before Thanksgiving last year, Jessup, 34, a fund-raiser at Salisbury State University, received a kidney transplant from his brother, Mark."So this Thanksgiving, I am thankful for being able to enjoy life with my wife, daughter, family and friends," he says. "You never know when life might end."That daughter, Emily, was born just two months before his transplant operation last year. Two weeks ago, his brother Mark's daughter, Alex Marie, was born.

A national organ-sharing network is threatening sanctions that could severely curb the state's ability to obtain kidneys for local transplants -- a move that could have life-or-death consequences for scores of patients in Maryland.Two of Maryland's most prominent hospitals -- Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the University of Maryland Medical Center -- have been so successful in their transplant programs that they have inadvertently helped give the state the largest kidney "debt" in the nation.

KARUIZAWA, Japan -- One minute, Mike Peplinski is talking about rocks, brooms and gaining a gold medal for the United States.The next, he is speaking of doctors and pills and his upcoming kidney transplant."

WASHINGTON -- Nancy Nearing gave at the office. And I do not mean the United Way. The 42-year-old Virginia mother of two gave a kidney. To her boss.To put it as simply as she did, "I had a choice of either wringing my hands and saying, 'Oh, dear,' or doing something about it."For six years, the technical writer, had worked in Rockville on a computer programming team headed by Art Helms. When she heard that he was about to lose his kidneys to a genetic disease, she decided to help. But hers was a help far beyond flowers or even a pint of blood, much more than a get-well card.

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, 49, Pakistan's top classical singer, died yesterday in a London hospital, to which he had been admitted last wee suffering from hepatitis. He died of a cardiac arrest. His body is to be flown back to Pakistan for a funeral. Pakistan's official APP news agency said the singer left Pakistan for the United States last week for a kidney transplant but stopped for a few days in London, where his condition deteriorated. He popularized the subcontinent's traditional qawali form o music and semiclassical Pakistani music by mixing it with popular modern beats.

Dr. Curtis E. Davis, founding director of the renal dialysis program at Bon Secours Hospital, died of a heart attack Tuesday his Columbia home. He was 61.Coming to Baltimore in 1978 to head the old Lutheran Hospital's Rosemont Community Doctors Center, Dr. Davis gave up a lucrative private practice in Minneapolis, where for 12 years he was also a full-time kidney specialist on the staff of the University of Minnesota-Veterans Administration Medical Center.In...

Farces are deceptive creatures. They seem like froth, but they're among the more difficult dramatic genres to write and perform.At the Vagabonds, where John Morogiello's "Keeping It Aloft" is receiving its premiere as part of the Baltimore Playwrights Festival, there were enough opening-night glitches to upset the delicate mechanism of any farce.But Morogiello's script also has problems. These begin with the characters, who are so downright stupid that it's difficult to get caught up in the spiraling action.

Should people who are responsible for their diseases receive the same consideration for organ transplantation as those who develop diseases through no fault of their own?Debates about making people suffer the consequences of their voluntary, unhealthy lifestyle choices recently surfaced when Mickey Mantle received a transplant to replace his liver, which had been severely compromised by years of heavy alcohol abuse. Concern also was expressed that Mr. Mantle, because of his "hero" status as a former New York Yankee star, received special treatment when he received a liver after beingon the waiting list for only 24 hours.

It all started when a Virginia man read his church bulletin one Sunday. A woman from his parish, someone he had never met, needed a kidney. Thomas F. Koontz, grateful that God had recently saved his teenage daughter from brain cancer, offered her one of his. When the woman found a more suitable donor, the 54-year-old retired Marine called Johns Hopkins Hospital. Was there someone else, he wondered, who might need his kidney? Koontz's selfless act started a chain of events that would allow not just one person to get a desperately needed kidney but eight people to get new organs to keep them alive and thriving.

Robert Imes, a painter and mechanic at Johns Hopkins Hospital, had been too sick to work for nearly a year. When he came back, he ran into Pamela Paulk, the hospital's vice president for human resources, outside her office. "I said, 'Robert, I really missed you. Is there anything I can do for you?' " she recalls. "He said, 'I need a kidney.' And I said, 'You can have mine.' " Turns out, she meant it - and she has been sharing the entire experience, blogging about the days leading up to the June 22 surgery and the days since (www.

It never crossed LaKebra Clark's mind that she'd donate one of her kidneys, let alone that it would go to her own father. The eldest of three children, Clark had always been close to her dad, Gregory Bryant, 47, a salesman in an auto dealership. A year ago, he became ill with hypertension, and doctors diagnosed kidney disease. Suddenly, it was time to help save his life. On Dec. 30, which happened to be Clark's 27th birthday, her father called and said, " 'I need you to come through for me,' " she recalled.

Joyce D. Smith, a longtime Social Security Administration clerk and a kidney transplant survivor, died Sunday of pneumonia at Mercy Medical Center. The Gardenville resident was 55. Joyce Dorothea Douglass was born in Baltimore and raised in East Baltimore. She was a 1970 graduate of Frederick Douglass High School. She was a teacher's aide at Coppin Elementary School before going to work in 1972 as a clerk at Social Security Administration headquarters in Woodlawn. Mrs. Smith, who was working at the SSA when she died, had won numerous citations and awards for her work, including a 30-Year Award.

She knew the words were coming. For a few days shy of 20 years, Charlotte Wolfe had lived with her mother's kidney, transplanted when she was just 9 years old. No matter. She still burst into tears that day in October 2000 when Dr. Edward Kraus put his hands in his lap and leaned in. "Well," he told her, "it's time. We'd better start looking." Looking, that is, for another kidney. Like a growing number of transplant recipients, Wolfe would need a second new kidney - retransplantation, they call it. Kidney transplants have come a long way since the first was performed more than 50 years ago. Today, more than 90 percent of kidney transplant patients are alive a year after surgery and most of those kidneys last a decade or more.

A week before Christmas in 2003, Norman Biondi gave his daughter Emily the greatest gift possible: a new lease on life. He donated a kidney to his ailing daughter, who not only has regained her health but these days is making a name for herself as a competitive athlete. This week, Emily Biondi, 24, is scheduled to travel to Bangkok, Thailand, with her father to participate with Team USA in track and field events at the World Transplant Games. Last year, the Ellicott City native won four medals at the National Transplant Games in Louisville, Ky., but says the world games are "a much bigger deal."

A 38-year-old West Baltimore man pleaded guilty yesterday to robbery with a deadly weapon in the December attack on political activist A. Robert Kaufman, according to the city state's attorney's office. Steven Carr of the 3800 block of Hillsdale Road admitted taking part in the Dec. 6 robbery on the porch of Kaufman's home on North Hilton Street. Carr admitted striking Kaufman in the head with a brick and then taking his wallet. Sentencing is set for Sept. 7, prosecutors said. Kaufman - who has run for a variety of local, state and federal offices on a socialist platform - was also attacked at his home in 2005.

A more complete accounting asked I would like to thank The Sun for Larry Carson's June 14 article "Democrats back off on rezoning change." Howard County's ability to manage growth with the zoning process will affect every county resident and is a very important issue for the upcoming elections. I attended the COPE forum Monday evening, and the forum was both well-run and well-attended. I needed to read Mr. Carson's article very carefully to realize that he was describing the same event that I attended.

After a week when the Ravens welcomed a new hero to their offensive lineup, perhaps this would be a good time to examine the true nature of heroism. Newly acquired quarterback Steve McNair may well lead them to glory, but there is a slight, bookish guy in the Ravens' front office who recently delivered a lesson in real courage - and it never occurred to him to spike the ball in the end zone. Ravens president Dick Cass has been looking a little gimpy lately. He had to be driven to work for a few weeks and he has a rather prominent scar on his abdomen, even though he is - and has been - in perfect health.

To take over for her failing kidneys, Madeleine Therrien, 63, of Merrimack, N.H., tried a home dialysis system that flushed her abdomen with fluids several times a day. But, as often happens with this kind of treatment, known as peritoneal dialysis, she wound up in the hospital with a painful abdominal infection. So she switched to hemodialysis three times a week at a clinic, which was effective but meant sitting for four hours each time, hooked up to a machine that cleansed her blood.