Gift of love is the gift of life

Unable to receive the kidney he needs from a blood relative, a man is shown the depth of his wife's love.

By MAUREEN BYRNE

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 25, 2000

LARGO -- Mark Bona has a new lease on life. And he has his wife to thank.

Nine days ago, Amy Bona gave her husband one of her kidneys.

No more dialysis. No more fistfuls of pills. No more sickness.

"The kidney has been inside her for 25 years, and now it's working in me," Mark said Thursday while resting in his room at Tampa General Hospital. "I know Jesus sent her down here for a reason."

If his wife had not sacrificed a kidney, Mark, 26, would have had to wait two or three years for a new organ -- years filled with illness, of inability to provide for his family.

His sister's and mother's kidneys did not match his body. His three half-brothers declined for various reasons.

That left his wife.

Amy says there was never any doubt in her mind that she would donate a kidney to her husband of six years. "I knew if it came down to me, I would do it," she said. "I wanted to save the father of my two children."

A miracle kidney

Doris Raes, Mark Bona's mother, knew something was wrong with her 8-year-old son. He was tired. He was sick all the time. And his body was bloated.

For six months, Mark bounced from doctor to doctor in his hometown of Canandaigua, N.Y., southeast of Rochester. No one could pinpoint what was wrong with him, Mrs. Raes said.

Finally, after a trip to the emergency room and a series of tests, Mark was found to have a rare kidney disease called focal glomerulonephritis. Basically, his kidneys weren't working.

"He was filling up with toxins," Mrs. Raes said.

Steroids kept his condition at bay for a while, until dialysis was required. He needed a new kidney.

Four years after the diagnosis, the call came. He had a match.

So, at age 12, when most boys are playing baseball and discovering girls, Mark underwent a kidney transplant. The organ came from a cadaver.

After the operation, Mark tried to live as normally as possible. He played soccer, wearing special gear to protect his kidney. His mother gave him hormone shots so he would begin to grow. Things were looking up.

Yet it wasn't easy. His mother made sure he took his medicine. She made sure he got plenty of sleep and ate right. She made sure he was urinating enough.

"I was on him all the time when he was a young person," Mrs. Raes said.

That may explain why his transplanted kidney lasted almost twice as long as expected. Typically, kidneys from cadavers last an average of seven to eight years.

"Mark kept that kidney for 13 years," Mrs. Raes said. "That was a miracle in itself."

But in 1994, Mark, newly married and living in Largo, began to get sick again. The kidney began to go into rejection.

"That kidney decided it was enough," Mrs. Raes said.

Falling in love

Amy Estelow spotted Mark Bona walking on the street. She told her friends she thought he was cute.

They both had attended Osceola High School in Seminole a few years earlier but didn't know each other. Eventually, they met. Two years later, they married.

"He's my first love," said Amy, now the mother of 5-year-old Joshua and 2-year-old Casandra.

When Mark and Amy started dating, Mark tried to keep his illness a secret. "I just wanted to be normal," he explained. "I didn't want her to dislike me because I had a problem."

But as she had with previous girlfriends, Mark's mother sat Amy down and told her that her son has a kidney disease. Life could get rough, she told Amy.

Yet knowing about Mark's illness didn't change things for Amy. "When you fall in love, you fall in love," she said.

Shortly before they exchanged vows, Mark's kidney began to fail. Drugs kept it working for a few years, but in 1998, Mark's health deteriorated. He could no longer work and had to quit his job as a car mechanic.

"He just couldn't live a normal life," recalled his mother. "He was just too sick, too weak to do anything."

Last July, when the kidney was close to failure, Mark started dialysis. He received the treatment, which does the work of the kidney by removing waste products and excess fluids from the body, three times a week. Amy would go with him, always bringing home an exhausted and sick man.

"Right then, in my heart, I knew," she said. She knew she would give him her kidney.

Amy had faith, but would she be a match?

A remarkable thing

When it became certain that Mark would not get a kidney from any of his blood relatives, Amy stepped forward.

Mark wasn't sure it was a good idea. "I didn't know if I wanted her to do it," he said. "She's healthy and normal. We've got two children."

"He was scared for me," Amy said. "I knew in my heart what was going to happen. I knew that I was going to better his life and get him off that machine. I believe in the Lord. I believed that everything was going to be fine and that we were going to be a family again."

In early May, she began a series of tests at LifeLink Transplant Institute in Tampa, a non-profit organization that helps recover and transplant organs. For nearly six weeks, she visited the facility, where technicians examined her blood and tissue, took X-rays and a CAT scan of her body and tested her heart. As with all donors, she also was interviewed by a psychiatrist.

Finally, she got the word that she was a match.

"That's the remarkable thing here," said Dr. Charles Wright, a nephrologist at LifeLink.

Wright said transplanting kidneys between spouses, called "living emotionally related transplants," is becoming more and more common. LifeLink has conducted 17 of these transplants since 1995. Nationwide, he said, about 100 of these transplants are done annually.

"It's definitely something that is increasing," said Marilyn Lara, a spokeswoman for the National Kidney Foundation.

The organization does not have any statistics on spouse-to-spouse kidney transplants yet because the procedure is relatively new, she said.

The survival rates of these kidneys are higher than those of cadaveric kidneys, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. An August 1995 article reported that the three-year survival rates were 85 percent for kidneys from 368 spouses, 81 percent for kidneys from 129 living unrelated donors who were not married to the recipients, 82 percent for kidneys from 3,368 parents and 70 percent for 43,341 cadaveric kidneys.

"The results of kidney transplants between spouses are better than mother to child," Wright said.

That may be because a husband and wife are closer in age and there may be more of an incentive for the recipient to lead a healthy lifestyle because the donor and recipient are living together. "It's the best thing one can do for the relationship," Wright said.

Life is more important

On June 16, two days before Father's Day, Amy had one of her kidneys removed. Because of laproscopic surgery, doctors only had to cut a small incision in her abdomen, thereby reducing her recovery time. The procedure lasted four hours.

Mark's surgery took three hours. The husband and wife were put in adjoining rooms to recuperate. Amy was released from the hospital Monday and plans to return to her night job in five weeks. Mark hopes to be home early this week.

"They're saying (the kidney) is coming along slowly but surely," said Mark, who must take daily doses of steroids and anti-rejection medicine.

It will be six months before Mark can go back to work. He says he would like to study law enforcement, possibly specializing in forensics.

The couple say Medicare is paying their hospital bills. With both Amy and Mark out of work, money is tight. Mark receives a $500 monthly stipend from Social Security. Mark's mother is helping out as much as she can, but rent and bills still need to be paid.

Amy isn't worried. "Life is more important than material things," she said.

Mark looks forward to a life without dialysis. He says it's hard for him to express his feelings about what his wife has done.

"I can't explain it," he said. "It's a miracle. She's got a big heart."

Mrs. Raes fills with emotion when talking about her daughter-in-law. "I am so grateful for Amy. She is a very good mom and a very good wife. And now she's given him life."

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