Contact:
Ellen C. McKenna
434-982-4490
ecm6n@virginia.edu
Mrs. Christmas Receives A Special Holiday Gift
From UVa Transplant Center
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (December 18, 2006) - Dorothy Christmas has a special twinkle in her eyes this holiday season.
"I almost have too much energy. I've been cleaning my house and putting up holiday decorations," said the lifelong resident of nearby Zion Crossroads, who recently became a grandmother.
Mrs. Christmas, who had been receiving dialysis for almost two years, received a call in late November from the Transplant Center at the University of Virginia Medical Center telling her that a donor kidney had become available. At that point, she had had been on the transplant waiting list for two-and-a-half years.
"My wait had been so long, I was thinking about giving up. When I received the call, I was shocked, tickled and excited. I ran around the park where I live telling everyone that I was getting a new kidney," she recalled.
Mrs. Christmas said she is very thankful to all the medical professionals who cared for her, especially the nurses at the Zion Crossroads Dialysis Center. "I was going to pieces during the time I was on dialysis," she said. "The nurses encouraged me to keep coming and to keep praying. I can't tell you how much their care and support meant to me."
"We are delighted that Mrs. Christmas is doing so well with her new kidney," said Dr. Kenneth Brayman, the UVa surgeon who performed her transplant. "It's good to see the twinkle back in her eyes."
During the last four years, UVa's kidney transplant program has doubled in size. Mrs. Christmas is among the center's more than 100 kidney recipients this year. In all, UVa has performed 211 organ transplants during 2006.
"All of our transplant programs are growing, even as other transplant centers across the country are shrinking or closing," Brayman noted. "UVa is the only center in the region certified to perform a full range of transplants - heart, lung, liver, kidney and pancreas - and we are caring for more transplant patients than any other medical facility in the state."
While Mrs. Christmas may have gotten the best holiday gift she could have imagined, Dr. Brayman remains concerned about the many other patients still waiting for donor organs. "There continues to be a national shortage of donor organs. A key will be to find more living donors, so waiting list times for all patients will decrease," he said.
To increase the success rate of kidney transplants, UVa has adopted cutting edge technology. One approach uses plasmapheresis, a process that removes proteins from the blood to reduce the likelihood of organ rejection due to a positive crossmatch. Other protocols are helping the transplant center shorten recipient waiting times by using organs that might previously have been rejected.
"UVa's transplant results are among the best in the country, and we're committed to providing the most favorable and caring outcomes to both organ donors and recipients," Brayman said.
"We want more people to benefit from the kind of life-saving gift that Mrs. Christmas has received."
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