Net link to kidney donor yields lifeline

The kidney recipient and donor met for the first time at the Columbus Zoo.
By WILLIAM K. ALCORN
VINDICATOR HEALTH WRITER
NEIL T. BARTALON OF CANFIELD, blood type A positive, needed a kidney.
Jolene L. Smith of Dayton, blood type O positive, had a kidney to donate.
How did they find each other? The Internet, of course.
Bartalon and Smith met electronically in July 2001, and on March 13, three years from the month he was diagnosed with autoimmune kidney disease, Bartalon got his new kidney and Smith fulfilled her wish to do a "good thing."
Six weeks after surgery, performed at St. Elizabeth Hospital's Northeast Ohio Transplant Center, both are doing well.
Bartalon's surgery was done by Dr. Charles Modlin and Smith's by Dr. Stuart Fleckner. Sandra Bartalon said they received great support from Dr. A.D. Biscardi of the Ohio Kidney Group, family and friends, and their pastors at Canfield United Methodist Church.
Smith, 42, is back at her job as an accounting technician in the Aeronautical Systems Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton.
Bartalon's kidney is working well. And despite a setback when his incision broke open, Bartalon, an avid fisherman, is starting to think about a fishing trip to Canada or Alaska with his son and buddies.
Bartalon, 55, worked in heavy construction for 33 years for Kirila Construction in Brookfield before having to quit in January 2001 because of his illness. He does not expect to be able to go back to his old job, but he said he might be able to work there in another capacity or find a little part-time job someplace.
Bartalon and his wife, Sandra, his high school sweetheart from Hickory High School in Hermitage, Pa., consider Smith "an angel" sent here for their family.
Finding a donor
FOR BARTALON, SMITH'S GOOD-Samaritan deed came after he had languished over two years on the national kidney transplant list without so much as a false-alarm call.
Sandra Bartalon, a registered nurse for Advanced Dermatology, was not a match, and he was unwilling to accept a kidney from his children, Jason, a student at The Ohio State University, or Callie, a student at Kent State University.
"They are young and might need them," he reasoned.
Frustrated, other family members got involved in his search for a kidney.
His sister-in-law, Rebecca Krafft of Arlington, Va., surfed the Internet for options and ran across the South Eastern Organ Procurement Foundation in Richmond, Va. She saw messages from two people who said they wanted to be organ donors.
"I said, 'Oh my gosh. I never would have dreamed ...'" and posted Bartalon's need for a kidney on its bulletin board, Krafft said.
Smith said the Bartalon posting and another message caught her eye, and she left her e-mail address with both.
"I said to myself, 'I'll contact the first one who responds.'"
Fortunately for the Bartalons, Krafft contacted Smith first, and the process began.
"Rebecca called us at 11 p.m. one night and said, 'I think this is serious,'" Sandra Bartalon said. "We called Jolene right away and talked until 1 a.m."
The families met the next month at the Columbus Zoo.
"It was very relaxed, like we'd known each other awhile. I think it was pretty much at that time that we decided to go forward," Smith said.
Evaluating the gift
PROCEEDING MEANT BATTERIES of tests for both to ensure physical compatibility. And because they were strangers, St. Elizabeth took extra precautions, in the form of extensive psychiatric and social evaluations, to make sure Smith was truly altruistic, said Anne Marie Ottney, clinical transplant coordinator.
Ottney, a nurse since 1982 when she graduated from the St. Elizabeth School of Nursing, said this is the first kidney transplant at St. Elizabeth in which the donor and recipient were completely unconnected.
"Sometimes during evaluations, we just come right out and ask if money is involved. In this case, we have no reason to believe any money changed hands," said Ottney, a clinical transplant coordinator since 1991.
Brendan Minogue, professor of bioethics in the religion and philosophy department at Youngstown State University, thinks living donations are the wave of the future for kidneys, livers and lungs.
"I believe we could make a really significant dent in the need for organs through altruistic donations by living, unrelated persons. There are people out there who are genuinely altruistic. We just have to stand in awe of it."
There are practical guidelines at hospitals and clinics that do living donations, and they work very hard to make sure it is a genuine gift.
Some donors seek money
REGARDING SMITH'S GIFT TO her husband, Sandra Bartalon said: "We never talked about money. I felt, that way, if she was ever asked, she could honestly say no."
But, the idea of selling organs, which is illegal, is not that farfetched.
Krafft said that after she posted her brother-in-law's need for a kidney on the Internet, she received three contacts from people who either mentioned a sum or made it clear they wanted money.
But, Krafft said, in Smith's case, money had nothing to do with it.
"She just made up her mind to make a difference. It kind of makes you reconsider everything," Krafft said.
"When Jolene had surgery, we felt completely responsible for her health ... for anything that might go wrong," Krafft said.
Time for healing
AFTER THE SURGERY, BARTALON said relief from the symptoms of his disease was immediate.
Itching, so severe that he carried a back scratcher with him wherever he went, quickly disappeared. Within two days, the joint and muscle soreness that had incapacitated him the last year was gone. And he is no longer tied to peritoneal dialysis, done several times a day at home.
About Smith, Bartalon says: "I love her dearly, and I've told her that. This has come down to more than a kidney. It developed into a major experience where people became friends and everybody here -- friends and family -- took Jolene and her mother into their hearts.
"She gave me life, and I think we have given her a family," Bartalon said.
alcorn@vindy.com