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'Why not share a kidney?'
By BRADY DENNIS, Times Staff Writer Linda Whaley is the kind of person who will buy four needy children bicycles at Christmas and tell not a soul about it.
It's about how she gave life to a dying man. She didn't even know him well. He was the husband of a co-worker; his kidneys were failing. That's all Whaley needed to know. "Why not share a kidney?" Whaley said, in her matter-of-fact fashion. "He needed a kidney. I had two." There was a problem, though. Whaley is 63 years old. 'I really thought that was the end'Gus Arroyo, 51, spent much of his life pushing his body to its limits. He was in powerlifting competitions. He worked construction, building houses from Key West to Brooksville. He coached baseball. He built a batting cage and a makeshift weight room in the backyard of his Brooksville home and trained with his son. Several years ago, all that changed. A doctor with a frown told Arroyo: "Well, your kidneys are failing." He wasn't sure why. Could be chronic inflammation of the kidneys. Or maybe high blood pressure. Arroyo knew he was sick, had been for a year. He could barely walk 10 feet. But how could a man who had bench pressed 440 pounds now have failing kidneys? "I said, "Well, I'll go home and die,' " Arroyo said. "I really thought that was the end." Little did he know, it was only the beginning. Arroyo spent more than two years waiting for a kidney. Two years making himself sick with daily dialysis treatments. Two years hooked to a machine, unable to travel to see his 24-year-old son, Bronson, pitch for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Two years wondering if his kidneys would call it a day and finally send him to his grave. 'Anything for anybody'That's when Linda Whaley stepped in. "She will do anything for anybody," said Vicki Buchanan, who works with Whaley at East Pasco Medical Center. "And she just keeps on going." One thing about Whaley is unmistakable: nothing fazes her. After 40 years as a nurse, she's seen just about everything. She roams the emergency room the same way she lives the rest of her life. Confident. Collected. Get the job done. She works in the ER with Arroyo's wife, Julie. And because her blood is O-positive, it means she can donate to anyone. She met Gus several times and learned of his situation. That's all it took for her to volunteer her extra kidney right away. But it wasn't to be that easy. She was 61 at the time, and doctors at Tampa General Hospital said she was too old too donate. Many doctors say kidneys from donors older than 55 are at a higher risk of failing, according to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine. But two years after Tampa General said no, Shands hospital in Gainesville said yes. Doctors there said they would take a donor of any age. At 63, Whaley never hesitated. Calm and confidentSurgery was set for Nov. 6. Gus Arroyo and Linda Whaley both said they felt calm that day. After all, this kind of surgery had been done hundreds of times before. Doctors would transplant the kidney, patch them up and life would march on. But it didn't quite turn out as planned. Because of complications, Whaley stayed in surgery most of the day. She lingered in the recovery room for more than six hours. She finally went home two days later. She was in pain for weeks but never complained. It was the path she had chosen. The morning after the transplant, Arroyo said he felt fine. "I jumped out of bed," he said. "I thought I could go home the next day, I really did." Within days, a severe pain in his right side wouldn't go away. "He said to me, "I'm going to die,' " said Arroyo's wife, Julie. "When somebody says that, I always say, "Let's take a look.' But I just said, "No you're not, honey.' " Minutes later, Arroyo collapsed. He had gone into respiratory arrest due to blood clots around the new kidney. Doctors had to perform a second surgery. Not long after that, still weak and weary, Arroyo began throwing up blood. His medications had eaten holes through his stomach. Doctors didn't want to open him up for a third surgery, but Arroyo saw no choice. "I thought, "This is stupid. I can't go through this every night,' " he said. "I told them, "If I die on the table, then that's what happens. Let's do it.' " In three surgeries, doctors pumped almost 23 pints of replacement blood pumped through Arroyo's body. When he could eat, many meals came through a straw. Nearly a month after the Arroyos left their quaint tin-roofed house on a Brooksville back road, they returned home Dec. 3. He has had to return once since then, to repair a leaky ureter, which connects the kidney to the bladder. But most days now, the Arroyos are at home. Just where they both want to be. Gus Arroyo sits at his dining room table, 40 pounds lighter than before his surgery. He wears a Pittsburgh Pirates hat. It is dusk. Breeze blows through the moss on the live oaks outside. The hardwood floor inside creaks. Arroyo's son is out back lifting weights. His wife is by his side. Whaley also has come to visit. 'Tribute to her character'"Everything is different now," Arroyo says. "It's like a camera that was out of focus, and now it's focused. Everything is really clear." He pauses, searching for words, when asked what Whaley's donation means to him. "There are no words to explain what a wonderful thing she has done," Arroyo says. "It is a tribute to her character. I can thank her, but those words don't come close to meaning what they should mean." The transplant probably isn't the last of Arroyo's troubles. In the worst cases, replacement kidneys last only three years. Some last up to 30 years. If Arroyo's new kidney fails, he will have to return to dialysis and to the waiting list, which averages two to four years. But for now, he and Julie aren't thinking that far ahead. Julie, who slept on a cot and never left her husband's bedside, is too busy praising the saint across the table from her. "She gave us our lives back," she says of Whaley. "Now we can move on. We can go on to do the things we want to do." Linda's emotions are harder to tap. She doesn't shed her modesty easily. This was the right thing to do, so she did it. She says she would do it again. Giving a bike to a poor kid is one thing. But why, at 63, let doctors cut you open and cut out a kidney for someone you barely even know? "Well, I think life is sharing," she says. "If you don't share in life, you are a pretty miserable soul." -- Staff writer Brady Dennis covers the city of Zephyrhills and crime in east Pasco. To reach him, call (352) 521-5757, ext. 23, or send e-mail to dennis@sptimes.com.
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