Teen champions transplant cause
By: Stacey Gorski
Nine years after he was first diagnosed with a chronic kidney disease and just over 11 months since his kidney transplant, South Brunswick senior Adam Zweig will graduate this June with the other 443 members of the senior class.
"It’s terrific. We are very fortunate. We thank the Lord above every day," Adam’s dad, Martin Zweig, said.
As if his simply finishing school despite his health problems was not enough, Adam also has been admitted to several New Jersey colleges, completing the application process and SATs in between a pair of public speaking engagements regarding organ donation and transplant care. He also has started a Web site, www.kidneypower.com, that tells the stories of several transplant patients.
"I figured if I didn’t know about how many people need transplants, who did?" Adam said last week. "There is a dire need for organs."
He has received a pair of awards for his accomplishments and message: one from the National Kidney Foundation and a Middlesex County citizenship award for his work in raising organ donation awareness.
Adam sees his own experience as an opportunity to educate people. He knows a lot about kidney disease and treatment, having first become ill when he was 9. At the time, he was misdiagnosed as having Lyme disease.
"He just kept getting worse. The medicine (for Lyme) was just not doing anything," said Adam’s mom, Eileen Zweig. "Eventually, they got it right."
Several tests and surgeries later, it became clear to his doctors that Adam suffers from idiopathic glomerulonephritis, a chronic and progressive kidney disease that can eventually lead to kidney failure and the need for a transplant.
Adam was given the proper medication: heavy doses of steroids that caused him to gain 50 pounds.
However, his health continued to deteriorate.
"From seventh grade through his junior year of high school, he missed 50 to 80 days of school each year," Ms. Zweig said.
To offset the frequent absences, the Zweigs enlisted the help of a home instructor.
"Carol Piza was great in helping him keep up. He was able to take tests and write essays at home," Ms. Zweig said. "It is remarkable that he has been able to get into colleges and get caught up. But when other kids were on vacations, Adam was home doing homework."
The absences continued to pile up Adam’s sophomore year when he began to feel his worst.
"My kidney completely failed that year," Adam said.
Then, in his junior year, he had to go on dialysis.
Dialysis is a medical process by which doctors rid the toxins and waste in a patient’s bloodstream.
As Adam explains on his Web site, for hemodialysis, the type he had, doctors had to create access to his blood and filter it through a machine. Doctors usually carry out an operation to join together a vein and an artery in a patient’s arm.
"Mine was done in my chest!" Adam writes on his Web site, which is intended for other children who may have to undergo the same procedure.
While the process may sound painful and difficult just by itself, Adam was traveling to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick in the afternoons after spending a full morning at school.
"While you are having hemodialysis you will have to rest in bed or in a chair. If you take any breaks during the session, you will have to make up the time at the end. Based on your test results, your doctor will advise you on how long the session needs to last," Adam wrote on his Web site.
He was on the machine three times a week for four hours at a time.
"That’s when I realized I needed to do something looking at all those kids. I didn’t know how bad it could be before that," Adam said in an interview last week.
His mom agrees that seeing other younger, sicker patients was difficult.
"The hardest part for me was dialysis though not really for Adam. He had a great attitude his was very positive," said Ms. Zweig.
Adam’s dialysis treatments ended six months later with a kidney transplant on July 24, 2001. Since the kidney was available at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, that’s where the surgery took place.
"He was on the wait list for 18 months. It came when he was doing OK on dialysis, but was just starting to have health complications," Ms. Zweig said.
After seven days in intensive care and another three days in the hospital, Adam was released to go home. Since then, the number of doctor appointments each month have shrunk from once a week to once every three weeks.
"He still has to take about 20 pills a day," just to stay healthy, said Ms. Zweig.
However, he is well enough to attend school regularly. He has appeared on a panel of doctors and patients at Robert Wood Johnson. The group spoke to nurses who were just being transferred to the transplant unit.
"I just talked about what kind of care transplant patients need," Adam said last week. "My second shindig was more recently. It was at a Jewish temple where I told people that it is not against the Jewish religion to donate organs or to help get other people to donate. People need them."
While there are no solidified plans for future speaking engagements, Adam has a few open invitations from temples and other groups.
"My (guidance) counselor recommended I do talks about determination and setting goals, too," Adam said.
It is through his determination that Adam has gotten himself into his current predicament of choosing which college he would he like to attend.
"I’ve gotten into Rider University, Monmouth University, Ramapo College and Rutgers (University), the Cook Campus," Adam said. "I am waiting to hear from the College of New Jersey but it’s hard to get into. If I do, I will go there."
His dad says he has not gotten into all the schools he applied to, but it doesn’t really matter.
"I am so glad. It’s great to see him enjoy things he should be enjoying at his age, doing what he should be doing. I’ll miss him when he goes to school, but I hope he really enjoys his college experience. He’s earned it," Mr. Zweig said.