Canton woman pays it forward with kidney donation

When Nancy Cahillane Connor made the decision to offer one of her healthy kidneys to Stephanie Glazer — a New Jersey woman who had only come into her life just months earlier — she made sure to do her homework and thought long and hard about the surgery and the recovery time and all that it entailed.

Nancy Cahillane Connor

Connor, a Canton native and an educational assistant at the Galvin Middle School, conducted her own research online, sought opinions from doctors, read pamphlets on becoming a living donor, and looked for any possible reason why she should not go through with it. But as every box was checked and every test came back as it should, she felt more and more comfortable with the idea and her thoughts kept returning to her family.

She thought about her nephew and godson, Michael DeRose, who lost his mom, Connor’s sister Patty, to breast cancer in 2003 but had recently gained a loving and supportive mother-in-law when he married Glazer’s daughter, Jessica, early last month.

She also thought a lot about her own two sons, Brian and Stephen, who both had their share of early health struggles due to Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that causes the body to destroy its own platelets and leads to a host of complications. Now grown men and symptom-free, the two brothers both had their spleens removed as infants and are alive today thanks in part to the generosity of bone marrow donors.

For Stephen in particular, the need for a transplant had been so acute that the community rallied to his aid, turning out in droves at Canton High School in May 1994 to have their bone marrow tested. And while no one locally proved to be a match, Stephen’s angel would later appear in the form of an unidentified 52-year-old man from Racine, Wisconsin — a man that the family eventually had the good fortune of meeting.

“It’s indescribable — we received lifesaving marrow from a man who was a total stranger,” recalled Connor, “and being on that end of it and to be able to thank someone for saving your kid’s life is something I will never forget.”

Now, more than 20 years later, Connor finds herself with the opportunity to pay it forward and to be that lifesaving angel for another person — in this case a fellow mom who she has grown close to over the past year.

“She is ‘Mama G,’” Connor said of Glazer. “I mean, they have dinner on Sundays together. They watch the Pats together. She’s [Michael’s] ‘mom’ and he already lost my sister and Stephanie’s just an amazing lady.”

At Michael and Jessica’s wedding in Mexico, Connor got the chance to meet and spend time with the entire Glazer family, and it only reaffirmed in her mind that she had made the right choice.

“Besides the wedding itself, it was the most beautiful thing that I’ve ever experienced,” she said. “There was just so much love and happiness all around us.”

Connor said it was a few months prior to the wedding when she first learned about the severity of Glazer’s medical condition — stage 5 chronic kidney disease, also known as end-stage renal failure. Glazer now depends on regular home dialysis treatments and had been on the transplant waiting list for a full three and a half years before Connor talked to Jessica and realized that she and Glazer shared the same blood type.

While she couldn’t quite explain it at the time, Connor told Glazer she just had a feeling that things were going to work out for her, and the medical tests proved her right as doctors determined that the two women were essentially a perfect match.

To arrive at that conclusion, Connor had to undergo a battery of tests, including blood and tissue typing, an antibody screen, a 24-hour urine test, an EKG, and a mammogram, among others. Finally, in late March, she received the call that her kidney was clean and that she would be cleared to donate.

And when she considers the odds that two random people who are not related by blood and do not even share the same ethnic background would end up being a match, she cannot help but feel the guiding presence of her sister Patty.

“Just the whole thing is so crazy. I mean, what are the chances of us being a match?” she said. “You can’t tell me my sister doesn’t have something to do with this.”

On May 30, Connor will drive down to New Jersey with her husband, Jim, and the following day both families will meet with the transplant team to discuss the procedure. The surgery itself will take place June 1 at St. Barnabus Medical Center, rated among the top hospitals in the state for kidney disease and kidney transplants.

The estimated recovery time for the surgery is four to six weeks, and Connor elected to use her own sick time rather than force Glazer to wait until the end of the school year for what everyone hopes will be a life-changing operation.

As for the prospect of going through surgery and sacrificing one of her kidneys, Connor admits it can be a scary thought, but she is very comfortable with the decision and has full faith in the medical professionals who will be carrying out the procedure. If anything, she hopes that sharing her story will perhaps inspire others to consider donating to the estimated 100,000 Americans who are currently awaiting a kidney, or to help out in other ways, like registering for the National Marrow Donor Program.

Even now, as she approaches the surgery date, Connor said she still has a difficult time comprehending the magnitude of her gift, although it is starting to sink in and she couldn’t be happier.

“Honestly, I wasn’t really thinking about [saving a life], but the closer it gets, I’m feeling emotions that I have never felt before,” she said. “It just amazes me that of all the people out there, it’s me. It’s hard to put it into words, but I’m so excited.”

For more information about living kidney donations, visit the National Kidney Foundation’s “Big Ask/Big Give” campaign at www.kidney.org/transplantation/livingdonors. For assistance with finding a possible donor match, visit the Canton-based nonprofit organization MatchingDonors.com.

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Posted by Jay Turner on May 11 2016. Filed under Features. Both comments and pings are currently closed.