Not until the second half of the 20th century did organ and tissue transplants become common procedures, and it’s still stunning to think the innards of one person can be successfully placed in another and keep right on working.
Transplantation connects human beings and sometimes whole families like nothing else can. Here are but two recent examples, one involving a bone marrow donor and recipient who will meet for the first time Saturday at the recipient’s wedding, and the other about a bond formed between two Wisconsinites who received new lungs.
Their message to you is this: Be an organ and tissue donor. The need is great, and how often do you get a chance to save someone’s life? Visit YesIWillWisconsin.org to register as a donor.
There’s no way you could guess where Jeremy Gitzlaff was inspired to sign up as a marrow donor. He was in Crandon for an off-road truck racing event, one of his interests, and someone had set up a table in the pit area to promote marrow donation.
Last year, the 29-year-old Pewaukee man, an industrial maintenance worker and Marine reservist who served in Iraq, found out he was a match for someone in need.
More testing was done, and on May 2, 2013, marrow was removed from his pelvis and flown immediately to the recipient, who was said to be male, about Jeremy’s age and somewhere in the United States.
The marrow arrived at University of Minnesota Medical Center where Adam Myers awaited this second chance at life. The 31-year-old salesman from North Branch, Minn., had been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia late in 2012. Now he was excited to hear a marrow match had been found.
After the transplant, Adam spent months in isolation to ward off viruses and other threats to his weakened immune system. His strength returned.
And after the obligatory one-year wait had passed, he set out to find his donor. Jeremy agreed to meet, and the two men began a conversation via Facebook and texting. Adam had posted on Facebook a photo of the marrow, which looked like a bag of blood. Jeremy was seeing it for the very first time.
“I was thanking him over and over and over,” Adam said. “Him being a Marine Corps guy, he’s pretty humble and he asked me, ‘Please stop thanking me.'”
Adam invited Jeremy and his girlfriend, Ashley Rowland, to his wedding this Saturday in Minnesota. It will be the first time they meet in person.
“I know for sure that not just me but my whole family is going to be pretty emotional about it,” Adam said. His bride, Sloan, already knows she will hug Jeremy and cry.
Jeremy said he doesn’t want to overshadow the wedding in any way, but he is thrilled to be invited. He downplayed his contribution and said others would have stepped forward to donate.
“I’m sure we’ll be friends until we’re both walking with a cane,” Adam said. “We’re not brothers, but we are brothers. We have the exact same blood.”
Meanwhile, on Friday night, the Milwaukee Brewers and Froedtert Hospital will honor Wanda Kruchten and Thomas Chrystal on the field before the ball game.
Both received double lung transplants, Wanda in 2012 and Thomas in 2013.
Wanda, 60, of Crivitz, has sarcoidosis, a lung-scarring disease similar to the pulmonary fibrosis that killed her daughter, her mother and her niece. Eventually, she relied on an oxygen tank 24 hours a day while waiting for a transplant.
In the summer of 2012, she was hospitalized and close to death. Through a break in her unconsciousness, she could hear her grandchildren at her bedside saying goodbye to her. Suddenly word came that a set of lungs was available for transplant.
Following a few months of recovery, Wanda reached out through the transplant coordinators to the donor’s family. The donor’s mother replied to her letter and informed Wanda her lifesaving lungs came from her 31-year-old daughter, Robin, who died following a car accident in Kenosha County where she lived.
On Saturday, Wanda and that mother will meet for the first time. “She said, ‘I’m so looking forward to watching your chest rise and fall with each breath from Robin’s lungs,'” Wanda said.
Thomas, 59, who lives in Milwaukee just west of downtown, was diagnosed with COPD in 2005 and put on oxygen. As the years passed, it became extremely hard to get around or travel to see his family.
Now with the new lungs, he is active again, regularly attending festivals, visiting family and joining charity walks. He, too, has reached out to his donor’s family, but so far has not received a reply.
But as he was leaving Froedtert after his surgery, the transplant coordinator handed him a letter from Wanda, whom he didn’t know. As a way of giving back, she has written to more than a dozen lung transplant recipients, not knowing their names but offering her support and congratulations.
“If you ever want to talk transplant, or just talk, please feel free to call me,” she writes. “And I signed my name, my transplant date and my home phone number.”
So far, two people have responded. Thomas called her the very day he received the card. “It was just so encouraging. I called her and we talked for an hour that first phone call,” he said. “She’s like a sister to me.”
Many calls followed, and they have met in person a few times. “Over time, we have become very special friends,” Wanda said. “He’s a sweet, loving, caring, gentle soul.”
Wanda and Thomas both like to wear a button to start conversations and to celebrate their good fortune. There might be a few at Adam’s wedding this weekend, too.
“Donate life,” it says.
Call Jim Stingl at (414) 224-2017 or email at jstingl@jrn.com