Hoping for a kidney
Woman pushes organ donation message year round
A Fond du Lac mother has launched a one-woman crusade to promote organ donation year-round, and help her child.“One month a year isn’t enough, because people are dying while waiting for organs,” said Christina Smoot-Surkamer.
Her 17-year-old son Tylor has been fighting kidney disease since he’s been born and has endured 28 operations in his lifetime. Missing both his kidneys, Tylor was on a waiting list for an organ transplant, but has recently been taken off until he can again meet some of the requirements needed to qualify.
“My son could be one of the 18 people who die every day in Wisconsin. I’m pleading for a bigger voice than my own because alone I’m not making a difference,” Smoot-Surkamer said.
Organ donation proponents hope thousands more people will register to donate through the state’s new online system. More than 10,000 Wisconsin residents have signed up to become potential donors of organs, tissues and eyes in the first month of the new online registrywww.yesiwillwisconsin.com, according to the Associated Press.
Currently 54 percent of licensed drivers in the state, or 2.2 million people, have signed up to be organ donors on their license.
More than 1,500 people in the state are currently on waiting lists for organ transplants. Nationwide, the list has grown from 50,000 in 1992 to 107,000 today.
Martha Mallon, president of Donate Life Wisconsin, says it’s important for people who have already agreed to become organ donors on their driver’s licenses to sing up online. She says the orange dot on your license does not automatically put you in the new database. Those who agree to become organ donors when they apply for and renew licenses in the future will be added automatically.
Smoot-Surkamer has designed her own bumper stickers, T-shirts and handouts, with the slogan “Organ Donation Awareness Year Round.” She moved with her three children here from Chicago 16 months ago when her apartment was robbed. She hoped to get better care for Tylor and live in a safer community.
“We lived in gang territory. The gangs were beating him up, trying to force Tylor to join,” she said.
Her son was born with neurogenic bladder, a condition that caused paralyzation of the bladder, and damage to blood vessels in the kidneys, according to Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, where Tylor is being treated.
A port in his neck allows the teen to receive dialysis treatment three times per week, but makes it difficult to keep up with classes at Fond du Lac High School, his mother said. Tylor has had six surgeries at Children’s since moving here. Because of a medical condition, Smoot-Surkamer failed the donor test that would allow her to give a kidney to her son.
Some days, she said, after all he’s endured, her son tells her that he wants to give up. It’s difficult watching her son suffer.
“He takes close to 20 pills a day, and you know how teens are. He just wants to be like the other kids, and he gets angry and refuses to take them,” she said. “He’s been dealing with this all his life.”
Jackie Dake, Tylor’s dialysis nurse from Children’s, said it’s difficult for young people to endure dialysis.
“Patients have very limited diets. Tylor is on the machine for 9 hours each week. We try to work around his school schedule,” she said.
Dake works in a smaller unit, with 7 young patients. She said Tylor has met some goals and is working toward getting back on the transplant list. The wait will be three to five years, if a living donor doesn’t come along.
“Tylor likes to draw and is very good at art. When he wants to be determined he can get things done. Patients have to take their medicine every time they eat and teenagers, especially, don’t like to be different. A lot of the times the kids don’t want to stick it out,” Dake said.
Smoot-Surkamer recently spoke at the University of Wisconsin-Fond du Lac on organ donor awareness. She said friends like Pete Albertz and Bacon Realty in Fond du Lac, have shown her kindness.
“They came together and brought us here, found us a home in Fond du Lac,” she said.
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