Gifting life: AHN, CORE celebrate National Donate Life month at Canonsburg Hospital
Photos: Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
John Dukate encourages attendees to the AHN/CORE Donate Life flag-raising ceremony at Canonsburg Hospital to become organ donors, while his wife, Nancy, proudly looks on. “The wait list can be up to seven years” for those in need of a transplant, John said, and “people who donate live long and normal lives.”
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Andy Beam, from Highmark police, raises the CORE Donate Life flag outside Canonsburg Hospital Friday morning, as part of the Allegheny Health Network’s National Donate Life month celebrations. Representatives from CORE, AHN, Canonsburg Hospital were joined by local living donor, family donor and recipients, all of whom shared their life-changing transplant stories.
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Lori Keener, of Canonsburg, holds a photograph of her late husband, Matt, whose passing in 2016 saved the lives of eight individuals who were gifted his heart, lungs, kidney and other major organs. Keener shares her husband’s story as a way to honor his legacy and advocate for the life-changing gift of organ donation.
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Nancy and John Dukate are enjoying John’s new lease on life; he received the gift of a kidney transplant in December, following Nancy’s September organ donation. “I didn’t realize how white and pasty he was for probably a couple years, until he got the surgery. As soon as he came out of recovery, that’s the first thing I thought. I said, ‘John, you’re so pink,’” Nancy Dukate laughed. “This has been a wonderful experience, especially with AHN; they’ve just been awesome.”
John Dukate needed a new kidney.
“I could feel myself going downhill,” said Dukate, of Uniontown, at Allegheny Health Network’s Donate Life flag-raising ceremony at Canonsburg Hospital Friday morning. “I was probably about a week or two from going on dialysis before I got the transplant. I would be cold all the time. I’d get up and do something for a little bit and I’d be in my chair the rest of the day. It wasn’t much of a life.”
John Dukate’s wife, Nancy Dukate, watched her effervescent, golf-playing, bow-hunting husband grow pale and struggle with chronic fatigue. She knew a kidney transplant was in his future. Unfortunately, even though the couple is well-matched, they weren’t an organ match.
But thanks to the national donation program’s exchange list, if Nancy Dukate donated a kidney, another generous donor could gift her husband theirs.
Nancy Dukate decided to become a living donor.
“I was worried. You just kind of sit there and watch what’s going on, and there’s nothing you can do. I did some research and after I read, I thought, I could do this,” she said. “I just felt like I could do it. I knew I could do it. It was like a calling.”
John Dukate was hesitant to let his wife of nearly 50 years (they’re celebrating the golden anniversary in 2024) donate her kidney, but “she’s a highly intelligent person,” he smiled, and acquiesced.
On Sept. 20, 2022, Nancy Dukate became a living donor, gifting her kidney to a 69-year-old man from the Pittsburgh area.
“For the recipients, their lives will never be the same. They have been given another chance to embrace a new life, far from the suffering they had experienced. For the donors, our lives will never be the same, either,” she said. “I see things more clearly. I am more joyful. It’s been as big a gift for me as it has been for the recipients. If I had another kidney, I would donate again.”
Nancy Dukate said gifting life to a stranger was an experience she can’t put into words. But when she became a living donor, her husband was still one of the more than 100,000 people on the national waiting list.
More than 7,000 Pennsylvanians are waiting for a life-saving organ transplant, according to the Center for Organ Recovery & Education, and one person is added to that list every 10 minutes. which is why CORE partners with other organizations like AHN each April to celebrate National Donate Life month.
“The impact of organ donation spreads far and wide, bringing hope to many,” said Joe Weber, chief financial officer for CORE. “For those waiting for an organ transplant, hope is what keeps them going. For a donor family, donation gives them hope that their loved one will never be forgotten. For living donors, who hope their generosity will restore health to someone in need. After a transplant, recipients are filled with hope at a second chance at life. But hope requires efforts and actions from all of us.”
John Dukate wasn’t losing hope, but wasn’t holding out for a new kidney, either, following his wife’s living organ donation last year.
“I’m a born skeptic, and I never believed it would happen. But the end of November, they called me and said, ‘Hey, we have a tentative schedule of Dec. 15. Stay healthy, and you should have a kidney,'” John Dukate said. “And I did. Dec. 15, I got my kidney. It was life-changing.”
In 2022, at AHN alone, 215 generous donors gifted relatives, friends and strangers a “new lease on life,” said Dr. Thomas Corkery, Chief Medical Officer at Canonsburg Hospital.
“Just one donor can have an incredible effect on multiple people. One person has the potential to save eight lives through organ donation and can touch as many as 75 lives through their donation. However, it isn’t about all these statistics,” he said. “Today’s a day to honor and celebrate the real people behind those numbers, the ones who benefit and the ones working inside and outside our hospitals to make organ and tissue transplantation possible and the heroes who decide to give the most generous gift possible.”
Lori Keener, of Canonsburg, is a registered organ donor, but hasn’t always been an organ donor advocate.
“I stand before you today a reformed organ donor,” she said during the flag-raising ceremony. “The only time I gave any thought to organ donation was when I renewed my license and said no.”
Following the sudden, unexpected death of her husband Matt Keener, an organ donor, on Christmas Eve 2016, Lori Keener witnessed firsthand the miracle of life her husband gifted others.
In order to honor her husband’s wish to be an organ donor, Keener would have to let him pass away.
“My life was shattered. Losing a loved one is never easy. Everything is an awkward blur of outsiders never really understanding. But CORE was different. I was made aware of how my love could do so much through the giving of his organs, tissue and cornea – gifts. To save others, my love would pass on Christmas Eve,” Keener recalled. “While we were in the deepest pain, I hold on to hope knowing that those people got a call on Christmas Eve; their second chance had come, their Christmas miracle, and their miracle was my Matt.”
Keener speaks publicly, most times holding a photograph of her late husband, and encourages others to become donors. Speaking, sharing the family’s story and advocating for CORE is part of Keener’s healing journey.
The good news is that, as of 2022, about 170 million Americans are registered as organ donors, according to the Health Resources & Services Administration. But more donors are needed.
“Transplant is a marvel of modern medicine, and it offers renewal for those who need it the most,” said Joy Peters, chief nursing officer at Canonsburg Hospital. “Transplant provides a promise of longer, fuller life that benefits not only our patients, but their loved ones. We are committed to continuing to raise awareness on the importance of becoming an organ donor and the many ways you can save someone else’s life through this selfless act of kindness.”
John and Nancy Dukate understand the importance of gifting life through organ donation firsthand, on both the giving and receiving end.
“I’m just so grateful,” said John Dukate, who penned a letter of thanks to his donor and only learned after his 39th birthday party – Dukate turned 70 April 7, but “You’re only as old as your newest organ,” he laughed – that the donor is 38. “I have the potential of living 20 more years, where a couple months ago I didn’t think I’d make a few more months. I’m very grateful and just happy to be alive.”
The Dukates are enjoying being grandparents – John said he’s got more energy for his granddaughter – and while he hits the gym and looks forward to a summer on the links with friends, Nancy Dukate, too, is enjoying having her husband back.
“It’s the most enriching experience I’ve ever had in my life, aside from my children’s births. It’s hard to explain,” Nancy Dukate said. “Just an ordinary person living an ordinary life – I mean, we’re just plain people. To be able to reach out and help somebody and see, not through my recipient but see through a recipient’s eyes, because I’m living with a recipient, I can see what I potentially did. And it’s just, it is great.”
For more information on becoming an organ donor, or organ transplant in general, visit CORE’s website at https://www.core.org/ or go to https://donatelifepa.org/.