A Chat on the Beach Leads to Saving the Life of an East Hanover Man

NEWS RELEASE

For Information:

Carol Ann Campbell, 973-315-0300; 973-567-1901 For Immediate Release: Elisse Glennon, Director, External Affairs NJ Sharing Network: 201-240-9242

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Inspired by the Plight of a Distant Relative, a Verona Mother of Three Donates Her Kidney

VERONA, NJ – August 4, 2014 – Mario Teixeira’s life was saved last summer. He just didn’t know it.

It all began last August during a visit to Long Beach Island. Maureen Tracy had been sitting on the beach with a distant cousin, Josette Teixeira, hearing about how her husband, Mario, had been on dialysis for two years and desperately needed a kidney transplant.

Maureen, a single mother of three from Verona, expressed her sympathies and the topic of conversation moved elsewhere. But in the days and weeks that followed, Maureen could not stop thinking about Mario and the battle he was quietly facing.

Maureen began asking herself: “Well, why can’t I donate a kidney to Mario?”

“I started doing the research and realized that it was no big deal for healthy people to donate a kidney,” said Maureen, 45. “But I was concerned. I am a healthy person, a single mother and I wouldn’t want to do anything that would limit my active life.”

Earlier this year, Maureen was still thinking about Mario. So finally she picked up the phone and called Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston to ask questions and learn if she could even be a possible donor of Mario’s new kidney.

An appointment was scheduled for a test – Maureen was a perfect match. “I told Mario and Josette that I would donate my kidney; they were speechless,” she recalled. “They knew me and my personality, and, as a single mom, the sacrifice I would be making to donate a kidney. I never looked at it that way; it just seemed like something I was meant to do.”

Maureen underwent the kidney transplant on April 15. She was out of the hospital within two days, and without pain a week after that. Ten days after the transplant she was taking vigorous walks in the park, four weeks after the transplant she resumed jogging and, on June 8, she placed fifth in her age category at NJ Sharing Network’s fourth-annual 5K Walk and USATF Certified Race in New Providence.

“I’m so glad this happened; I was really blown away that Maureen even considered it,” Mario said. “I now get this feeling whenever she’s close by. When we were in the hospital, after the surgery, I said that I had a taste for eggplant parmesan. My son gave me this weird look and said Maureen had just said the same thing a few minutes ago.”

Mario said it is wonderful to have his life back and to have “a new, good, close friend,” noting Maureen and her kids were planning on coming by his East Hanover home later that afternoon to jump in the pool.

Maureen said she looks forward to volunteering her time with NJ Sharing Network and telling her story as a living donor, in the hopes others would consider donating a kidney.

Dr. Prakash Rao, Vice President of Diagnostic & Research Operations and Director of the Transplant Laboratory for NJ Sharing Network, said altruistic donors like Maureen Tracy are incredible individuals who selflessly save lives.

He notes that kidney donors could also be “paired donors,” in which they can become part of a chain and save countless lives. A paired donor scenario involves a patient who has an incompatible, yet willing donor. These donors are tested and entered into a registry database and matched with other pairs.

“Just one extremely compassionate and extremely generous person could start a chain, in which there are dozens of donors saving people’s lives at transplant centers across the country,” Rao said.

In fact, NJ Sharing Network’s state-of-the-art lab received the National Kidney Registry’s “Excellence in Teamwork Award” for helping to facilitate the longest kidney match of 2013. That was “Chain 221,” the second longest chain in the history of kidney transplants with 56 participants.

Through the efforts of NJ Sharing Network’s lab, as well as the many other centers participating, 28 people received life-saving kidney transplants. Among those were 10 highly sensitized patients who are difficult to match for kidney transplantation, adding a greater level of difficulty to the process. # # #

About NJ Sharing Network

NJ Sharing Network is a non-profit, federally designated organization responsible for the recovery and placement of donated organs and tissue for New Jersey residents in need of life- saving transplants. NJ Sharing Network partners with Donate Life America, a not-for-profit national alliance that drives communities to increase their numbers of registered donors. NJ Sharing Network honors those who gave, pays tribute to those who received, offers hope to those who continue to wait, and remembers the lives lost while waiting...for the gift of life.

To learn more, get involved, and register as an organ and tissue donor, visit www.NJSharingNetwork.org.