BY FRAIDY REISS
Correspondent
Seth Dolled, 23, gave the gift of life to his mom, Sharon, when he donated a kidney to her in January. The surgery was performed in a New York City hospital. MANALAPAN — Sharon Dolled will never again feel comfortable hounding her son, Seth, to clean up his room.
Not since Jan. 26, when Seth gave his mom a rare gift: his left kidney.
“If I nag him next week, he’ll say, ‘What did I do this for?’ ” Sharon said during an interview in her home.
Sharon, 54, a special education teacher at the Newbury School, Howell, suffered for several years from kidney disease. Finally, a couple of years ago, she was forced to choose between dialysis and a transplant. The prospect of going for dialysis three times a week seemed too “life altering,” she said.
“I wanted to go back to work and function normally,” she said.
So her husband and two children underwent testing to determine if any of them could donate a kidney to Sharon.
When Seth, 23, discovered he was the closest match, his reaction was “Let’s do it!” he said. He was happy to be able to help his mother, he said.
Sharon was less enthusiastic at first.
“I had a hard time with it,” she said. “I felt I should be giving to my son, not the reverse.”
“Besides,” her husband, Lonny, added, “we’ll never hear the end of it.” Even before the transplant surgery, he said, Seth began hinting about a certain expensive guitar he would love to own.
Last month, doctors at New York-Presbyterian Hospital operated on Seth and Sharon simultaneously. His surgery took three hours; hers took seven.
Before the surgery, the Dolled family spent time together in the presurgery waiting room, where Sharon wished her son luck and thanked him, she said.
“I tried to remain calm,” she said. “But once they took him first …” Her voice cracked, and she was unable to finish her sentence.
Every day 17 people die while waiting for a vital organ transplant, according to the National Kidney Foundation. Because of the lack of available donors in the United States, 3,886 kidney patients died in 2004, according to the foundation.
“He saved my life,” Sharon said. “He really did. You know you have good children, but you don’t realize how good until something like this happens.”
Seth urged others to do the same.
“If you want to help a family member or someone else, go out and get tested” to see if you can donate a kidney, he said. The surgery required him to take off time from his work as a longshoreman in Port Elizabeth, and he experienced post-surgery pain, but the only long-term effect the procedure had on his life was his doctor’s advice that he not do anything wild and dangerous, he said.
“I can’t do fencing anymore,” he joked.
Still, he insisted that what he did was nothing special.
“I gave life to the person who gave me life,” Seth said. “It’s a fair trade.”