Co-workers share stronger bond after kidney donation

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By Shelia M. Poole

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Longtime co-workers Ceri McCarron and Betty Egwenike have shared stories about raising children, caring for ailing parents and their travels.

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Courtesy of Tony Clark Betty Egwenike and Ceri McCarron two days after the transplant surgery at Piedmont Hospital..

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Now, they share an even stronger bond. McCarron recently donated a kidney to Egwenike, who was diagnosed with kidney disease several years ago and was on dialysis three days a week.

What makes their story even more compelling is that although the women worked together for more than 20 years and considered themselves workplace friends, they remained relative strangers outside the job.

“I think the conversations we’ve had in the last couple of weeks have been on a much deeper level,” said McCarron, 44, who lives in East Atlanta with her husband, two children and a menagerie of pets. “I never even had her phone number until I got it at the hospital.”

McCarron and Egwenike, 52, are now both home recuperating. The two, who work in the archives department of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library & Museum, were part of a living donation, which takes place when a living person donates an organ, or part of one. Usually, the donor is an immediate family member, such as a sibling, a child or a parent. But sometimes the donor can be a friend, co-worker or a more distant relative, according to the American Kidney Foundation.

In 2008, 5,967 of the 16,517 kidney transplants came from living donors.

More than 102,000 people in the U.S. are waiting for an organ transplant, according to the Virginia-based United Network for Organ Sharing. About three-fourths of people on the list are waiting for a kidney transplant.

Egwenike said several members of her family have high blood pressure or heart disease, so more than likely, she thought her donor would be a total stranger. Dr. Miguel Tan, who performed the surgery on McCarron at Piedmont Hospital, said the wait times are generally shorter for organs for living donors. There’s also less trauma to the organ, the outcomes are better and evaluations are done on living patients, so their health profiles are well-known.

But one day the two were talking about the transplant and hit on the subject of blood type. It turned out both shared the same blood type — O negative — and a seed was planted.

“She initiated it,” Egwenike said. The disease produces cysts in the kidneys and eventually causes the organs to deteriorate and stop functioning. By the time she was diagnosed, Egwenike said 55 percent of her kidney function was gone. “I was surprised she was actually going to do it. I was skeptical because you can change your mind at any time. I kind of stayed in the background because I didn’t want to be harassing her. I didn’t ask, it was out of her heart.”

It also surprised James A. Yancey Jr., an archivist at the Carter Library, who supervises both women.

“I am awed by this whole process,” he said. “I’m surprised anyone would do this. They’re not kin. They were friendly because they worked together, but they didn’t party together. I don’t think there was an association after work. She (McCarron) put into practice what a lot of people talk about and that’s love.”

As far as McCarron is concerned, it was the right thing to do. “I just knew ... I’d seen her struggle with her health for a while and she always did it with such dignity,” she said. “I could tell she was doing what she needed to do to take care of herself, work, raise a daughter and a marriage.”

McCarron spent hours researching the process and went through several tests to determine if she was a match and if her kidneys were healthy. At first her husband, worried about the longtime implications on her health, wasn’t too keen on the idea, but he later came around.

“We both agreed that if something were to happen to Miss Betty, how could we live with ourselves knowing we have helped,” McCarron said.

Egwenike is thankful for the gift. She said she feels much better and has no doubt McCarron took good care of her kidneys.

“Yeah,” she said, laughing. “She drank a lot of water.”

Egwenike said her husband’s friends would like to have a mass in McCarron’s honor. “It was just a beautiful gift,” she said. “She’s an angel.”

“I don’t think it will be the way it was pre-surgery,” McCarron said of her friendship with Egwenike. “Where it leads, I don’t know. I’ll just let it unfold.”