by Renée Shreve
April is National Donate Life Month, a campaign to encourage people to give the gift of life by becoming organ and tissue donors. While most Marylanders know they can simply check a box on a driver's license application and donate organs upon their deaths, they probably don't realize they can present that gift while they are still alive.
Deep Creek Lake resident Silvia Lahay has had that honor. On Jan. 12, she donated a kidney to her friend and fellow Deep Creek Lake Baptist Church member Patty Croston of Oakland. Silvia's husband, Dr. Ben Lahay, is the church's pastor.
"I feel humble, blessed that I got to be a part of this," Silvia says.
When Patty was 12, an untreated case of strep throat damaged her kidneys, which caused them to age at a faster rate than the average person's would. She always knew her kidneys would fail someday, but in the ensuing decades never experienced any major problems with them.
"They were fine up until the beginning of last year," says Patty, a retired Verizon engineering assistant. "The indicators in my blood work showed that my kidneys were slowly getting worse. And about April, my nephrologist in Morgantown (W.Va.) said, 'It's time to put you on the transplant list.'"
His plan was to get Patty a transplant before her kidneys deteriorated to the point where she needed dialysis. Studies suggest the odds of good results are better with "pre-emptive" transplants than those done after dialysis is needed. In addition, transplant patients fair better with kidneys from living rather than deceased donors.
Patty's doctor put her on a transplant list and made all the necessary arrangements with the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore for the procedure to begin. She had her first evaluation on June 14, 2010.
Patty originally wanted to go to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center because it's close to home and she knows people in Pittsburgh, Pa., that she could have stayed with after the operation.
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