A LIFESAVING
KIDNEY TRANSPLANT
The word came while Karen Matthews, 46, of Temple,
TX, was aboard a flight to San Francisco, CA.
It wasn’t until her plane landed that Ms. Matthews
turned on her cell phone and heard the multiple
voice mails letting her know that a kidney was
waiting for her at Scott & White, and that Dr. Jaffers
was preparing his team for her long-anticipated
transplant surgery. Ms. Matthews got off the plane
and took the next flight back to Texas.
That was in August 2008. “Now I feel so much sharper,
and I can really enjoy doing things with my daughter,
Miranda,” she says. The two like to be active, and Ms.
Matthews is grateful that she can now keep up with
her daughter and enjoy trips, such as a recent trip to
Disneyland. “I like to be busy,” she says.
When Ms. Matthews was in her 30s, she was diagnosed
with hereditary glomerulonephritis, which led to kidney
failure in 2004. It was news she had hoped she wouldn’t
hear, despite a family history of kidney disease. Her
mother and her brother Bryan both died of kidney
failure; her brother George and a niece have received
kidney transplants. “I kind of knew it was coming,” Ms.
Matthews says, “but I didn’t think it would happen to
me.” Actually, Dr. Jaffers had performed George’s
transplant 16 years earlier, when both men were in
the United States Air Force.
Dr. Narayanan put Ms. Matthews on dialysis in May
2007. She had been dreading this step because she
remembered how hard it had been on her mother
and Bryan. She credits Dr. Narayanan’s staff and the
Kidney transplant recipient Karen Matthews and her
daughter, Miranda.
dialysis nursing team for easing the transition. “They
really talked me through everything,” she recalls. She
also has kind words for Dr. Jaffers and his team for
keeping her spirits up during the long wait for a donor
kidney. “I trusted that they were watching everything
that had to do with me,” she says. “I knew the team
was looking after my best interests.”
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