Peters Township organ donor, recipient share success story while Washington man hopes for something similar

To mark April as National Donate Life Month, some area residents have found organ-transplant success plus hope for another situation just like it.
In June 2017, Sheila Coquet was recovering in the hospital, minus the kidney that her friend and fellow Peters Township resident Kristen Johnson so desperately needed.

Harry Funk/The Almanac
Harry Funk/The Almanac
John Means with his card: “A living-donor kidney transplant could save my life. Could you be my second chance?”
“I made it to her room to see her,” Coquet recalled, “and that was a moment I’ll never forget, the impact of knowing that person’s lying there alive on something that just came out of me, seeing her with color back in her face and just a liveliness to her.”
The recipient, in fact, was doing a bit better than the donor.
“I’ve got to say, she was eating a full meal of solid food and I was on a solid diet,” Coquet said. “They got us both up and walking the next day, and she went faster than me down the hall, because she was healthy. All of a sudden, she was given something that allowed a vibrancy back in her. My body was a little bit in shock, like, what did you just do?”
Today, both women are doing fine.
“The first year after the transplant is the hardest, because you’re getting used to the drugs and the doctors are adjusting all your meds,” Johnson said. “I had some trouble with infections, but now that it’s two years, it seems like they have everything worked out. So, it’s going a lot more smoothly.”
Johnson and Coquet developed a friendship when their children were attending Bower Hill Elementary School in Peters Township, and eventually Johnson mentioned her medical condition.
Coquet offered to go through testing to determine if a transplant was possible.
“She and I were a direct match, miraculously,” said Coquet, who works as volunteer manager at the City Mission in Washington.
One of her co-workers there is Doug Bush, and one of his friends is a gentleman named John Means, who generally goes by Jack. Both live in Washington.
“When I came to be aware that Jack needed a kidney, my office is right down the hall from Sheila’s,” Bush said, “and I knew that she had been a successful donor.”
Some candidates for transplantation may have a living relative, spouse, or close friend who is interested in donating a kidney. Such a donation is called a living donation, as opposed to one from a deceased donor.
A potential donor may be considered if he or she is at least 18 years old and has a blood type (A, B, O, AB) that is compatible with the recipient’s blood type. After a compatible blood type is confirmed, other preliminary tests are performed.
If test results indicate that a living donation is appropriate for donor and recipient, presurgical testing begins.
Testing includes ensuring that donors can return to living full and active lives with one kidney.
Living-donor kidney transplant helps reduce the shortage of organs and allows people with renal kidney disease to receive a kidney transplant sooner.
Source: UPMC Transplant Services
He contacted UPMC Transplant Services, through which Dr. Amit Tevar, a nationally recognized surgeon and researcher, performed the procedures for Coquet and Johnson.
“The blessing, for me, was that the transplant center told me they wouldn’t talk to me until I had a colonoscopy, which I’d been avoiding for 10 years. I had that done, and it checked out OK,” Bush said.
The news Tevar delivered to Bush wasn’t so good – because of a health issue, he wouldn’t be able to donate a kidney.
“He came to my house that evening after being at the hospital, and I wept because it was such an honor that he stepped forward to even donate to me,” Means recalled, his voice choking with emotion. “It wasn’t the fact that he was rejected. I didn’t care about that.”
Means said his condition is something of an aberration when it comes to people in his condition.
“I don’t have diabetes. I don’t have high blood pressure,” he said about some of the causes of kidney disease. “I was a little bit tired in the afternoon, and I’d go home and get in the recliner and sleep for 20 minutes. And I could go right at it again.”
In 2012, he learned he was suffering from kidney failure. Six years later, he received an update.
“I was in (the) Dallas Airport,” he said of his travels that took him to Texas, “and I got a phone call from my doctor’s office, ‘You need to immediately go to the hospital or you’re going to die.’ My kidney function was at zero. And I said, ‘Aw, you’re crazy.’ I Googled the 10 top things that are wrong, and I didn’t have any of them. And I said, ‘I’m finishing my trip,’ and I did.”
But when he returned home, he had to go on dialysis, a treatment that does the work of healthy kidneys in ridding the body of toxins, to a degree.
“Dialysis is a life-draining process,” he said of the three-times-a-week procedure, in his case. “It sucks the life out of you.”
At age 62, the father and grandfather is looking for another lease on life, one that optimally would involve a living donor to provide a healthier organ and reduce the risk of transplant failure compared with the alternative.
UPMC provided him with business-sized cards to distribute, which say, “A living-donor kidney transplant could save my life. Could you be my second chance?”
Plus he’s getting the word out in other ways.
“I’ve had to go from somebody who’s pretty reserved about himself, and I have to be upfront with people,” Means said. “I’ve had to use Facebook in a different way and promote myself.”
As it stands, he qualified to be placed on UPMC’s waiting list – specifically as John Means, not “Jack” – in October, and he was added in February to the United Network for Organ Sharing’s list, through which organs can be matched nationwide.
Eventually, he hopes to be able to report what Johnson can nearly two years after she received her friend’s kidney.”
“It’s been looking very good.”
For information about organ donations, visit www.upmc.com/services/transplant/living-donor.