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EAST WINDSOR: When a 21-year-old man dies in a car accident last April, he gave Brennan student Angie Essery "a second chance at life."
The fatality victim had signed a donar card, thereby leaving behind kidneys that perfectly matched Angie's transplant requirements. Angie's mother, Sue, "thanks God over and over again" that the donar knew enough to donate his organs.
Donating an organ is, "the most unselfish last act you can do before you die," Sue says. "So many people are dying and taking good kidneys with them. They're being wasted.
Before the transplant, Angie was always tired and frequently sick. She was pale, underweight and withdrawn.
"I didn't know how it felt to be healthy because I thought I was," Angie says. "I can't believe how much I changed." She now has the energy to do anything she wants.
"Since the transplant, even her personality has changed," her mother says. She came out of the hospital healthy, talkative and more than thirty pounds heavier. Kids Angie grew up with didn't recognize their classmate when she returned to Brennan in September.
The child who never wanted to participate in sports or social events has grown into a teenager making up for lost time. Angie is enrolled in Driver's Education, Polish classes, Grade 11 and is forever going out with her friends.
She modelled at the Kidney Foundation fashion Show, a commitment Angie admits she would never have undertaken before the transplant.
"It's like day and night with her," Sue says. "I can't believe a kidney makes that big a difference."
Angie's brothers, Lonnie, 14, and Shawn, 12, are pleased with the change in their sister. Angie makes sandwiches for her brothers and helps Shawn with his train set.
Even Angie's performance in school has improved. "Due to the kidney problems and due to her low energy levels, Angie was lousy at school," Sue says. In the months before the transplant, "I was so weak and so tired, I actually fell asleep in class many, many times," Angie says.
"To show you what a transplant does," Sue says, "this year, she's doing the best she has ever done in school and she's second top in English and she might get an award." Of course, it doesn't hurt that Angie likes writing. She hopes to become an author.
Angie was nine years old when she was first hospitalized with cronic renal failure (kidney failure). Her family doctor first thought she had the flu and gave her various medications but nothing seemed to work. Finally, he sent her to specialists who determined she suffered from kidney disease.
Last February, one of Angie's kidneys was removed and she was placed on dialysis. Angie's bedroom was turned into a hospital room in order to prevent contamination. "It affected all our lives with her being like that," Sue says.
But Angie did not have long to wait before a suitable kidney was found. Just two months later, a call came through from Toronto saying a perfect match had been found.
"I answered the phone," Sue says, "and she was jumping up and down on my shoulder, screaming all over the house, 'I got it, I got it!'"
The call came at 8:40 p.m. and the road by 10 p.m. Angie reached Toronto by 1 a.m. and was on the operating table three hours later. By noon the next day, the transplant was completed.
"Most kids are scared, but not her," Sue says. "She just counldn't wait to get that kidney and get off dialysis." A smile radiated from Angie's face all the way down the hospital corridor and into the operating room.
Although the surgery was successful, Angie still had a long way to go. Her top right lung started to collapse after the surgery. Her stomach was upset and she could not sit upright to take deep breaths that would clear her lungs.
Even now there is always a chance Angie's body may reject the kidney. "She had an acute rejection since her transplant," Sue says. It occured a month after the transplant but her family got her back to Toronto immediately and doctors could save the kidney.
Sue cannot say enough about the treatment Angie received at Sick Kids Hospital. "I've seen doctors who stayed all night on their own time after working hours. Nurses too -- they'll forego their suppers to stay."
Sue stayed at the hospital throughout Angie's ordealwhile her father took care of the boys and their Windsor home. To let the rest of the family know and understand what Angie was going through, Sue took pictures of every stage during recovery. The Kidney Foundation plans to print some of the photos in a manual designed to help perents of other childrens with kidney disease prepare for transplants and their aftermath.
"There's a lot of shocks," Sue says. For example, the incision was much larger than Sue expected. But the Kidney Foundation helped, primarily through a family support group where "parents each tell their story to help others who haven't gone through all this before," Sue says.
The Esserys find themselves frustrated when confronted by members of the public with little or no knowledge of kidney disease or organ-transplant procedures. People kept saying she would get better, Sue recalls, but with chronic renal failure, things get progressively worse until a transplant is needed.
Angie encountered other misconceptions about transplants while selling Kidney Foundation lottery calendars at Devonshire Mall. Sue recalls that, several months ago, an enraged woman approached Sue and Angie "and said she would call the police on us because this was a scam -- that we're murderers." Angie spoke up in reply: "If it wasn't for somebody donating his kidneys, I wouldn't be alive today." Angie finishes the story, "She said I'd be better off."