Positivity: Two Iowa sisters get transplanted kidneys
Updated April 19. 2008 3:47PM
No sibling rivalry here.
Two sisters on the transplant waiting list each received a kidney last weekend from the same deceased donor.
It took hours before the families of Karen Parizek, 52, of Lone Tree, and Elaine Behrens, 59, of Wilton, realized both were awaiting transplants at University Hospitals in Iowa City.
And for a while, the transplant team and sisters thought just one kidney was available.
“I was OK with that,” said Behrens, who thought the kidney would go to her younger sister.
Parizek, too, would have been fine had the kidney gone to her sister, who had been awaiting a transplant since 2006. Parizek was added to the waiting list six weeks ago.
Behrens, a second-grade teacher in Durant, started dialysis two years ago after high blood pressure led to kidney failure. Friends and relatives tested as living donors weren’t compatible matches.
She received a call about a potential kidney at 2 a.m. April 12 from her transplant coordinator. Just a half-hour later, Parizek received a call, too, from another coordinator.
Not wanting to awaken each other if the surgery didn’t materialize, the sisters traveled to Iowa City.
It was only after Behrens’ husband called the women’s middle sister, Phyllis Rife of West Liberty, that the realization was made about 10 a.m. last Saturday.
Rife told Behrens’ husband that Parizek was awaiting surgery at University Hospitals.
“He said, ‘You’re confused. We’re up here at University Hospitals,’” Behrens said.
Unaware the two were sisters, a nurse who knew two patients were potentially awaiting the same organ tried to stop Behrens’ husband from going into Parizek’s room, per hospital policy.
Even the women’s doctor, nephrologist Andy Bertolatus, didn’t initially realize the two were sisters.
“I tried to figure out how two people could look so much alike,” he said. “With different last names, I don’t think anyone in our program knew they were sisters.”
Bertolatus said organs donated in a region generally stay in the same area, but because they were such a close match, the kidneys — from a young person who died in Oklahoma — came to Iowa.
The organs were transplanted Sunday. The close match should result in a better long-term outcome, the doctor said.
Spokesman Paul Sodders of the Iowa Donor Network called the transplants “amazing.”
The United Network for Organ Sharing does not keep national statistics on sibling transplants.
“It’s got to be extremely, extremely rare,” Sodders said. …..
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