Live Organ Donation: A Story of Heroes

Some things are just meant to be. No one believes that more than Christine Grosso and Marie Manley. In March 2008, Marie donated a kidney to someone she didn’t know. That same day, Christine received a kidney from an anonymous donor at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Christine has battled Type 1 diabetes for nearly 20 years. She has suffered vision problems and gastrointestinal problems as a result of the disease. In late 2006, she learned her kidneys were failing.

“It was devastating news,” Christine says. “I attended an information session at the Penn Transplant Institute and found out I had the option of being placed on the transplant list or to find a donor. I felt I needed to do something, so I sent a letter to my family and friends explaining my need and asking them to forward the information to others.”

She received an outpouring of offers from family and friends, but at the end of the evaluation process a match had not been found. It was time to start over.

Enter Marie Manley. Marie’s family had recently moved and she had not yet become active in church and community activities as she had in the past. Sitting in church one Sunday, she read a letter printed in the bulletin from a young woman named “Christine” who was in need of a kidney transplant. The letter asked if anyone with a compatible blood type would be willing to consider a live donation.

“I have ‘organ donor’ checked on my driver’s license, but I never really gave it much thought,” Marie said. “When I read the letter, I told my husband I wanted to do this.”

She contacted the live donor transplant coordinator at Penn who helped answer her questions. She began the testing process and when she talked with her children about her plan, all four of them supported her decision.

While Marie was completing her evaluation at Penn, Christine had begun six-hour dialysis treatments three times a week. She was tired and lacked the energy to get around or even think clearly.

When it was determined she was a match for Christine, Marie decided she wanted to remain anonymous so the recipient could focus on recovery. Christine would not know her donor. Both surgeries were a success.

Following the transplant, Christine said her health improved almost immediately. “I thought, ‘Wow!’ I can think more clearly and I’m not so tired,” she said.

The Penn Transplant Institute asked Marie to share her story with other potential live donors. By speaking with others she realized a part of her story was missing because she did not know her recipient. Christine and Marie decided to meet.

The two women discovered that they lived just four blocks from each other, but they never met until after the surgery. “It was like it was meant to be,” Marie said.

“The outcome was wonderful for us,” said Louis Grosso, Christine’s father. “We got our healthy daughter back, plus we Gained Marie and her family.”

Christine is quick to add that she received much more than a kidney from Marie.

“It’s hard to explain,” said Marie. “We are more than friends, but different than family. It is a unique relationship. And I would do it all again, in a heartbeat.”

When organs fail, we succeed

The Penn Transplant Institute has more organ transplants, more experience and more survivors than any other program in the region. For information about live organ donation, call us at 800-789-PENNor visit the Penn Transplant Institute website.

About live organ donation

Organ donation is often called giving the gift of life, and many people have begun making that gift while they are still living.

Transplants can be life-saving procedures for patients suffering from end-stage kidney or liver disease. But because of a critical shortage of donor organs, many of those patients lose their fight while waiting for an organ. This shortage led physicians and researchers, like those at the Penn Transplant Institute, to look for more ways to help close that gap.

The Penn Transplant Institute, a regional and national leader in transplant surgery, performed its first live kidney transplant more than 40 years ago. That recipient still has his original transplanted kidney and is one of the longest surviving kidney transplant recipients in the world.

“The human body is able to function normally with only one kidney,” says, Peter Abt, MD a Penn transplant surgeon. “Research has shown that people who donate a kidney for transplant do not develop future renal problems at a higher rate than non-donors.”

In the late 1980s, living donation was expanded to include liver transplant—initially just for children. The current team at Penn performed the first living donor liver transplant on an infant at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) in 1995—from a mother to a child. The program expanded to adult-to-adult living donation in the 1990s. Today, about 10 percent of the liver transplants performed at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania are from living donors.

“We have been performing adult live donor liver transplants at Penn for more than 10 years and none of our donors have developed major complications,” said Kim Olthoff, MD, Penn transplant surgeon and director of the liver transplant program.

	Need an appointment? Request one online 24 hours/day, 7 days/week or call 800-789-PENN (7366) to speak to a referral counselor.