Gift of life: Neighbors bonded as one gives kidney to other

Friday, Dec. 13, 2002 | 11:08 a.m.

For four years, Barbara Morgan and Regi Fellows have been friendly next-door neighbors in Spring Valley.

When Fellows, a 39-year-old Las Vegas accountant, learned that Morgan, a retired Ohio mental health worker, needed a kidney transplant, she decided to make a major sacrifice.

Fellows learned everything she could about the risks involved with transplants -- and then offered Morgan one of her kidneys.

How unselfish was that act? When Fellows went to sign the paperwork authorizing the operation, she realized she didn't even know her ailing neighbor's last name.

Morgan, 65, a diabetic who had been on dialysis for two years, underwent the transplant surgery Dec. 3 and is recovering in the intensive care unit at Sunrise Hospital. Fellows is up and about and tending to her normal routine.

The story of Morgan and Fellows is one that doctors hope will encourage more people to become donors and combat the alarming national statistic of 16 to 18 people a day dying while on waiting lists for suitable donors of kidneys and other organs.

"When Regi came to me with the offer of a kidney I was shocked," said Morgan, a mother of three, and a grandmother and great-grandmother. "I told her that she could change her mind right up until the operation and I wouldn't think any less of her."

The fact that Morgan and Fellows matched tissues -- the prerequisite to qualify for a transplant -- was unusual, according to one of the doctors who performed the operation.

"I've done several hundred of these operations and I can count on one hand the number of times the live donor was a friend or co-worker of the recipient," said Dr. Scott Slavis, a urologist and medical director of the Sunrise Hospital Renal Transplant Center who performed the 2 1/2-hour surgery with Dr. Nicholas Feduska. "Most of the time, it's relatives -- child to parent, parent to child."

About 200 Las Vegans are on the national waiting list of 50,000 people awaiting kidney transplants. About 75 kidney transplants are done in Las Vegas each year -- 50 of them at Sunrise.

Morgan, who also suffers from high blood pressure, went on the national waiting list because there were no tissue matches among her family members.

Another factor that defied the odds was that Fellows is white and Morgan is black. When it comes to tissue matching, race definitely is an issue, medical experts say.

"It is unusual for black and white to match up," said Claudia Swift, transplant coordinator at the Sunrise Renal Transplant Center and a registered nurse. "There is a greater danger of (blacks) developing antibodies (that can cause organ rejection). Because of that, African-Americans generally are on the waiting list longer than whites."

Fellows says her decision to donate a kidney was reached after long, careful thought and after consulting with her husband, Tommy, and her daughters Candice, 18, and Nakita, 10.

"My primary concern was for Barb because she needed the kidney," Fellows said. "I don't feel I'm exceptional. My friends in Colorado told me I had a screw loose for doing it. But with the risks to donors being so minimal, I don't see why more people don't become donors."

Including X-rays, psychological testing, interviews with surgeons and blood tests, Fellows had to clear at least 30 hurdles to be accepted as a donor.

Swift said live donors are preferred over cadavers because the odds for survival are better with a living donor. Last year, for the first time, live kidney donors surpassed cadavers, though only slightly, Swift said. In past years, only about 25 percent of the nation's kidney donors were living givers, Swift said.

"My biggest fear was that my body would reject a perfectly healthy kidney and we would wind up with two women having just one kidney," Morgan said. "I'm a religious woman, and I prayed a lot.

"This has created a bonding between us. I have always been an active woman, but now I know that I will be doing even more volunteer work. My mission is clear -- to give back and help someone else."

Tom Morgan, Barbara's wife, said the couple also plans to travel, something Barbara could not do because of the rigors of dialysis, of which she now is free.

"I see a future where I will be doing a lot of house-sitting while Tom and Barb are vacationing," Fellows joked, noting that even with one kidney, she can continue her normal life, which includes her hobby of scuba diving.

Swift said Morgan's future includes taking daily anti-rejection drugs that will cost about $200 a month in co-pays after insurance.

Slavis, noting that Morgan's prognosis for long-term survival is good, says he feels he has been part of something special.

"It sure looks like this was something that was meant to be despite the odds," Slavis said. "This is a great story for the holiday season.

"I would only hope that it would encourage more people to fill out donor cards or be live donors and help us eliminate the waiting lists where people literally are dying while waiting to get organs."