Longtime diabetic finally receives a new kidney.
By: Lacey Korevec
South Main Street resident Tom Healey has more than just his birthday to celebrate. He turned 49 today, and this year he received the best gift he’s ever gotten: a kidney.
A longtime diabetic, Mr. Healey had been undergoing dialysis treatments three times a week for 12 years until now. On March 28, he underwent a successful kidney transplant that he said will change his life from here on out. But the road to better health has been a bumpy one for Mr. Healey.
Born with an obstruction in his right kidney, Mr. Healey became diabetic at the age of 10 and underwent his first kidney surgery when he was 21. The operation enabled his kidney and bladder to function together properly, but by the following year, doctors told him the surgery had failed.
"Basically, they opened me up and replaced the blockage with a piece of tube so that the urine would flow from the kidney to the bladder," he recalled Monday, from his bed at Robert Wood Johnson Hospital in New Brunswick. "A year later, they decided that it wasn’t doing exactly what it was supposed to do, so they decided that I needed to be a dialysis patient."
Mr. Healey’s mother, Eleanor Healey, also of South Main Street, assisted her son with his dialysis treatments for two and a half years, until he had his first kidney transplant in 1984. The surgery was a success, he said. But the new kidney was only a temporary fix.
"That transplant lasted for 11 years without any problems," he said. "And in ’95, I had to start back on dialysis. At the time that they gave me the transplant, they told me anything over five years and you’re doing good, and I got 11 years out of it."
When the kidney failed, Mr. Healey started his dialysis treatments again. Because of complications over the years with his diabetes, Mr. Healey is totally blind and has lost eight toes. But he isn’t bitter.
"I look at it like this: I have two choices in life," he said. "If I choose not to do dialysis, I have 10 days that I will live and then I decide to jump into the coffin. So, I chose to live on."
The process of dialysis involves two large, 15-gauge needles attached to tubes: one that takes blood out of the body to filter it through a machine, cleaning it and removing water, and one that returns the clean blood back into the body. After so many years, Mr. Healey said, he began to view the procedure as a job for him.
"That’s the way I made it through the last 10 years," he said. "It’s something I have to do. Some days are real good and some days you have a lot of problems. You never know what to generally expect. The less water weight you have on and has to be pulled off, the better you feel at the end."
It was during one of his dialysis treatments on March 28 around 3:30 p.m. that Mr. Healey received a call on his cell phone informing him that a kidney was available if he wanted to undergo the transplant. The transplant coordinator told him he’d have to be at the hospital by 8 p.m. if he was going to go through with the procedure.
When he arrived at Robert Wood Johnson Hospital, the doctors were in a hurry, he said. They had to test his blood with the donor’s to make sure it was a match and take X-rays as well as perform other procedures. They put Mr. Healey to sleep around 10:30 p.m. to begin the surgery.
"After that, all I know is that I got back to my room at 8 a.m. the next morning," he said.
When the surgery was completed, Mr. Healey was surprised to find it had all gone smoothly. He said it was the 18th call he’d received in six years telling him to come in for a possible kidney match, but he had learned not to get too excited because it never worked out until now.
"I have a new lease on life," he said. "Life will be totally different than what I’ve been going through for the last 12 years."
Mr. Healey was sent home from the hospital Wednesday, one week after he’d been admitted. He has to go back for checkups twice a week, but can drink all the water he wants and does not have to go through painful dialysis treatments.
Before the surgery, he had to limit his water intake, he said.
"They want me to drink a lot of water," he said. "They’re giving me four 16-ounce bottles of water to drink each day and I just feel like, ‘Oh man, this is tough,’ because I have that mindset that was, ‘Don’t drink water.’ So, that part of it is kind of tough, to change your mind that it’s OK to drink."
Other than that, he said he feels pretty good. It will take three months of constant checkups and a lifetime of several medications to make sure his body does not reject the new organ, but Mr. Healey plans to live life to the fullest in the meantime.
He lives with his mother, his brother Bill and his sister-in-law Suzanne on a 10-acre tree farm. In about three months, Mr. Healey said he plans to be walking around the property, cutting grass and trimming trees activities he used to be too exhausted to do because of the dialysis.
"I pick and choose the things that I’m capable of doing," he said. "And sometimes I need somebody to help me, so I have to wait for someone to come and assist me and then I take over afterwards. But I’m the kind of person who always likes to keep busy. I don’t like to sit around."
He’ll have to continue testing his blood sugar and taking insulin, but Mr. Healey said he’s hoping to get another call soon telling him to come in for a pancreas transplant. If that comes through, Mr. Healey said he will be cured of his diabetes and his life will change drastically.
"I won’t know how to act because I’ve been diabetic my whole life since I was a little kid," he said. "So, I’ll be able to eat anything I want. It will be a whole different way of life for me, something that I’m not used to."
Mr. Healey said he was originally trying to hold out for a kidney and pancreas that could be transplanted at the same time.
"It didn’t work that way and I had refused a couple of kidney calls because the doctors had told me that it was better to get a kidney and a pancreas from the same person," he said. "That way you would only fight one big battle instead of fighting two separate battles."
But he saw on TV that people’s bodies begin to break down after 10 years of dialysis, so he’s thankful his last kidney call came when it did.
"I made a decision about six months ago that when I got a call for a kidney, I was just going to take it," he said. "I needed to get off dialysis."
Today, Mr. Healey will celebrate his birthday among his family and friends with a homemade tomato soup dinner. Because he was on a potassium-restricted diet while on dialysis, Mr. Healey has not eaten tomato soup, which is high in potassium, in over 12 years. He said it’s the perfect way to celebrate his new kidney.
"This was a birthday present from God to me," he said. "And I’m not a real religious man, but that’s the way I’m looking at it."

