A perfect match

A WL man’s wife donated a kidney to save his life; now they want to raise awareness

By Kara Hansen

The West Linn Tidings, Jul 2, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009

VERN UYETAKE / West Linn Tidings

Rosemarie and Dan Pifer talk about their desire to raise awareness of the need for kidney donors at their West Lilnn home. Rosemarie donated one of her kidneys to Dan seven weeks ago.

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Dan Pifer was on the waiting list for a kidney transplant when he faced a startling realization: About half of patients age 60 and older on that list will die before a deceased donor’s organ becomes available.

Lucky for him, his wife, Rosemarie, was his match in more than one way.

She gave him one of her two kidneys. The transplant operation, performed by a medical team at Legacy Good Samaritan Medical Center, happened seven weeks ago.

Now, the couple hopes to raise awareness of the need for kidney donors, both living and deceased.

“There’s a great need for organ donors to come forward and help,” Dan, 60, said while sitting at the couple’s Beacon Hill Drive home this week. “The lists are long and the donors are few. There are a lot of people in need.”

“If you can’t do it now, consider being a donor later,” said Rosemarie, 58. “If you’re not in a place you can do it during your lifetime, then on your driver’s license, when asked if you’ll donate, check that block. Somebody gets to live because of it.”

The couple met while working at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in California. He was a regional inspector general, and she was an attorney. A few years ago, they decided to retire from their federal jobs and move to West Linn, where Rosemarie has family.

They married about 12 years ago, and found out around the same time that Dan had inherited polycystic kidney disease from his mother.

The genetic disease is characterized by the growth of fluid-filled cysts on a person’s kidneys, the fist-sized, bean-shaped organs that filter waste and excess water out of the body while keeping needed nutrients in.

Nationally, about 600,000 people have PKD, according to the National Institutes of Health. It’s the fourth leading cause of kidney failure, which leads to patients needing a transplant or dialysis.

Dan said the disease progressed slowly.

He joined 80,000 transplant candidates on the kidney wait list just a year and a half ago — roughly a decade after his diagnosis.

“It really does take a long time to develop and a long time before some of the symptoms become intolerable,” he said, noting a gradual rise in nausea, headaches and discomfort associated with his body retaining water. “You just keep adjusting to a different level of not feeling so good.”

But the wait gained urgency when the Pifers read a newspaper article reporting results of a recent study. The Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology estimated that 46 percent of 55,000 older patients on the U.S. kidney transplant list would not survive the time necessary to receive a deceased person’s organ.

It appeared those in need of a kidney might have better luck searching for living donors.

Even so, the decision wasn’t easy, said Dan.

“It’s hard emotionally for the recipient, especially with a family member, to drag anybody else into the circumstances,” he said. “I preferred waiting.”

But waiting was taking a toll on his wife, especially after his brother offered to give up a kidney but wasn’t an acceptable donor.

“It’s very hard to watch someone you’re very close to suffer like that on a daily basis,” Rosemarie said. “It’s a very debilitating disease, and I felt like I needed to do something to turn things around. I didn’t have a lot of faith in the waiting list.”

Doctor William Bennett is medical director of Legacy Transplant Services, part of the Legacy Health System. He said waiting times have increased, as the growing demand for kidneys has outpaced a relatively stable supply of organs from deceased donors.

Although surveys show about 95 percent of the public supports organ donation, only about 60 percent actually follow through when faced with a decision involving a deceased relative, he said.

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