News
Courtesy photo
The Bales family, clockwise from top
right, Mitch, Max, Lillie and Amy. Mitch is going to dialysis three
times a week, while seeking a kidney donor.
Hondo man hoping to find a match
for a new kidney
By William Hoover
Anvil Herald Correspondent
Many people ask, “What is the value of a
life?” Since most of us believe that life has value, surely there must
be even more value in saving the life of someone else without forfeiting
your own. Such is the upbeat attitude of Amy Bales in regard to her
husband, Mitch.
Hondo resident Mitch Bales, 46, can appreciate
the value of life more than most of us because he has nonfunctioning
kidneys. All Mitch wants to do is survive so he can rear his two
children and grow old with their mother. Mitch, his wife Amy, 36, and
their intermediate school-age children, Lillie, 11, and Max, 10, are
looking for a healthy, compassionate person who believes in the
interconnectedness of all life, that giving is more rewarding than
receiving, who has a tissue type compatible with Mitch’s and who is
willing to undergo surgery to donate a kidney. The donation would extend
the life of a fellow human, and most donors say the experience is
gratifying and emotionally bonding.
The son of Larry and Nancy Bales of Devine,
Mitch was a standout athlete at Devine High School, graduating in 1980.
Twelve years later, he discovered he had a
degenerative kidney disease and received a transplant the same year. He
thought his kidney problems were over until his first transplant began
to fail two years ago. If a new kidney donor is not identified soon,
Mitch’s wife of 12 years and their two children could be faced with
the premature loss of a successful, emotionally strong and loving
husband and father.
Mitch has been undergoing dialysis three times
a week in San Antonio since last September. However, dialysis is a
stopgap measure, not a cure. Ironically, Mitch’s older brother, Layne
Bales, 48, is willing to donate one of his kidneys, but doctors won’t
allow it. The kidney Mitch is rejecting was donated 16 years ago by his
younger sister Kimberly, now 43. The doctors do not want to risk
possible continued rejection of his body by using another kidney from
the same genetic pool.
Mitch, has focal segment glomerulosclerosis,
the same tongue-twisting disease that sidelined Sean Elliott of the San
Antonio Spurs, just weeks after his famous “Memorial Day Miracle”
shot helped lead the team toward the NBA Championship in 1999. Elliott’s
brother Noel donated his kidney to Sean in August of that year. On March
13, 2000, Elliott became the first player to return to the NBA after an
organ transplant, in a game against the Atlanta Hawks. He announced his
retirement in 2001.
Seven years before the Elliott siblings’
donation and transplant, Kimberly, who was 27 in 1992, donated her
kidney for transplantation into her brother, Mitch. The lifelong Medina
County resident thought his troubles were over and again began savoring
life. His joy for life was so radiant it attracted the attention of a
beautiful young woman, Amy Zerr, whom he began dating in 1994. Mitch
moved to Hondo in 1995 and, after a two year courtship, the couple was
married in 1996.
More treasures soon came into Mitch’s life.
After years of thinking his chances for having children had passed him
by, he and Amy had two children: Lillie in 1997, followed a year later
by Max. Both children attend Woolls Intermediate School.
The 12 years from the time of his marriage to
Amy until the beginning of 2006, were the most satisfying of Mitch’s
post-transplant life. The children were also a blessing to Amy’s
parents, Mary and John Zerr.
Mitch used to coach Max’s Little League team,
but is unable to this year because of the time he has to spend “tied”
to a dialysis machine at San Antonio’s DaVita Dialysis Center on
Medical Drive.
Unexplainably, the kidney his sister donated
began to fail after 14 years, despite Mitch’s religiously taking his
anti-transplant rejection immunosuppressive medications. If Mitch could
find a compatible kidney donor by the end of May he would, indeed,
consider it his own “Memorial Day Miracle.” Even if a kidney donor
could be found within the year, it would be more than the Bales expect.
HER HEART
Amy used to work at McDowell Middle School but
left to become the administrative assistant for Wiemers Oil. She is
always thinking about creative ways to find a kidney donor for her
husband.
“Mitch needs a kidney transplant and it would
be his second,” said Amy. “In January 2006, his body started
rejecting his first transplant out of the blue. We dealt with that for
two years and, in September, he had to start dialysis. We are searching
for a donor. His brother, Layne, is a match but the doctors don’t want
to use him because he is rejecting his sister’s kidney and his DNA is
too similar. We need fresh blood.”
When she says “fresh blood,” Amy means a
genetically compatible donor who is not from Bales’ own family. A
person with any blood type can be a donor as long as there is a tissue
match. The family’s health insurance would pay for all donor expenses.
Mitch is on the list of people needing transplants with Texas Transplant
Institute, which is part of the Methodist Hospital System.
However, finding a virtual stranger willing to
donate a compatible kidney is no easy feat. Accordingly, Mitch has to
have his blood cleaned of its impurities by a DaVita dialysis machine,
which functions as a mechanical kidney, but is not as easily
transported.
Mitch’s kidney specialist, or nephrologist,
is Steven G. Rosenblatt, M.D., who was affiliated with Medina Community
Hospital when he first diagnosed Mitch. Nephrology is a subspecialty of
internal medicine. Rosenblatt now sees Bales at the San Antonio Kidney
Disease Center (SAKDC) on Wurzbach Road. The Methodist Specialty and
Transplant Hospital is where Mitch goes if he has a cold, the flu or any
medical problem.
“He goes for dialysis treatments on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays
after work,” said Amy. “He starts treatment at 4 p.m. and usually
doesn’t get home until after 10 p.m. He is unable to receive dialysis
in Hondo because he would have to switch doctors. Certain doctors are
affiliated with certain dialysis providers.”
Mitch’s kidney disease has impacted Amy’s
and the kids’ day. “When he first started dialysis, the last week of
September, I was going in with him every evening because it really wiped
him out after the treatment,” she said. “I was driving him home for
about three months but then he got a little bit stronger and he now
drives himself. That was a real strain on the kids.”
His freedom is restricted and how he uses his
time is dictated by dialysis, but Mitch is not the type to dwell on his
problems or worry about the future, according to his wife. “I’m
lucky he is a stubborn man,” she said. “I guess that is what keeps
him going. He doesn’t get depressed or anything like that. He just
deals with it and does what he has to do. He still works full-time in
San Antonio.”
Mitch does not have to wear a pager because the
TTI has all their phone numbers on file if a compatible kidney were to
become available. Amy, who was tested and is not a match, is hoping some
of the people who read her story will call one of the TTI’s transplant
coordinators and have themselves tested for compatibility. “If we were
to receive the call that they’ve found a compatible donor, we would
have several hours to get to the hospital,” Amy said. “We have a
book about what it is like to be a donor for people who want to know
more about it. What I’m really doing is trying to put a plea out to
see if anybody would want to be tested to be a donor. I’ve had a lot
of people go and get tested with no luck. I’ve had one person who was
a match but they were unable to be a donor because they had their own
health issues.”
Not knowing their fate has been hard on the
Bales family. “Thankfully, everything has been working out pretty
well,” Amy said. “I have really great friends and family, and that
helps. The kids stayed at my parents’ house three nights a week for
three months when Mitch and I went to dialysis.”
Mitch has had to totally change his diet to
accommodate his failing kidney. “He is on a low potassium, low
phosphorous diet,” Amy said. “He can’t eat potatoes, tomatoes,
avocados and spinach -- all the healthy things he can’t eat.
“He is going to miss coaching Little League
baseball. He is still helping out, but if there is a game or practice on
Monday, Wednesday or Friday, he’ll miss it. He is kind of bummed that
he will be missing quite a few of Max’s games because of his dialysis.”
The Bales’ dilemma has taught Amy about the
resiliency of the human spirit, the value of friendship and the
excellent medical care in the area. “I’ve learned people are a whole
lot stronger than you think they can be,” she said. “There are some
really wonderful health care professionals out there.”
In some cases, families of people who need a
certain organ in order to continue living a normal life can swap organs
with the family of a matching donor. Some hospitals compare all tested
donors to all people needing transplants so a swap, or domino
transplant, might be worked out. TTI has recently initiated a transplant
program called “donor swap”, in which Mitch is registered.
“My mother was tested, but she was not a match for my husband,” said
Amy. “If another family is looking for a kidney for a relative, and
somebody in that family was not a match for that relative, but they are
a match for my husband and mom is match for their family, we could work
out an organ swap.”
If Mitch does not eventually find a donor, he
would be required to live within reach of a dialysis machine until his
organs fail because dialysis cannot remove all the impurities from the
circulating blood. “The kidneys help you produce Vitamin D so the
calcium, in the food you eat, can be absorbed into your bloodstream,”
Amy said. “His likelihood for a bone fracture is increased while he is
on dialysis and he has to take a lot of supplements (to ward off
osteoporosis). When he first found out he was sick, he had shrunk two
inches from losing bone density. It’s also a real strain on his heart
because the kidney can’t remove the potassium from the food he eats.
That’s why it is so crucial for him to be on a low potassium diet. He
has been real good at controlling that and he has to watch his
phosphorus intake, which is in milk, canned biscuits and processed food.”
Positive experiences, however, often result
from negative circumstances. “I think (Mitch) has valued life more,”
said Amy. “After his first transplant, he never thought he’d have a
family. I didn’t know him in 1992. I met him two years afterwards.
When we married in 1996, he never thought he’d have a family, so I
know he values his time with his children even more than the ‘regular
Joe’.”
Lillie and Max, are very aware of their father’s disease and what
could happen if a donor is not found, according to Amy. “I can see the
stress in the kids’ lives,” she said. “When (Mitch) gets a little
illness, if it is just a cold or stomach bug or whatever, it affects him
more. I know the kids are extremely worried about their dad.”
Asked how Mitch’s disease, searching and
waiting for a transplant had affected her, Amy let out a nervous laugh.
“Me? I just keep going,” she said. “You have to. Thank God I’ve
been able to maintain a healthy lifestyle so far. But there is
definitely stress in our lives.”
Amy hopes Mitch’s story inspires people in
the community to contact the Transplant Institute and have themselves
tested to determine if they are a match for Mitch or someone in the
donor swap program.
Amy said she has Mitch on a prayer list with
her Acts group at St. John’s Catholic Church. But she is not just
sitting back waiting for divine intervention. She is actively asking for
help from the community because she knows God helps those who help
themselves.
The task of finding a compassionate person with
enough empathy to donate their own kidney to someone they may not know
has turned out to be a challenging task, which is why Amy is making her
plea public. The family isn’t desperate, though. Instead, they are
hopeful in the face of daunting odds.
HIS KIDNEY
Mitch Bales is a practical man, taking life one
day at a time and keeping his head held high. When he was first told he
had kidney disease, he realized how fragile and precious life could be
in every moment. “I was 30 years old when my kidneys failed the first
time,” he said. “I realized then I was mortal. I thought I was
bulletproof, and I found out I absolutely was not.”
Bales was a big strong guy, who lettered in all
sports at Devine High School and played softball until he was diagnosed.
But the kidney disease “kicked him to the dirt” and he knew there
was something wrong. “I came to Hondo to see Dr. Rosenblatt,” Mitch
said. “He used to come here once a week. I walked into his office and
I hadn’t been on a scale in six weeks. I had weighed 210 pounds since
soon after I graduated from high school in 1980. I stepped on that scale
and it kept going down. When it hit 151 and finally balanced, I said,
‘Oh my God, I’m sick’.”
When Dr. Rosenblatt first reviewed Mitch’s
blood work from the lab 16 years ago, he told Mitch he needed dialysis
that evening or he could die over the weekend. “I said, ‘Well, we’ll
do dialysis tonight.’ That was June 5, 1992,” he said. “You don’t
forget some dates.”
After his kidneys failed, Mitch thought most of
his life was pretty much over. “I was 30 and single at the time, and I
figured I wouldn’t get married,” he said. “I thought I wouldn’t
have any children and I figured I would just live out the rest my life
for however long it lasted.”
When Mitch graduated high school, still
healthy, he was 5’10” and weighed 193. Now he is 5’ 8” as a
result of calcium loss, and weighs an average of 202.
“After I received my transplant, the weight
started coming back on, the strength started coming back, my endurance
returned,” he said. “Life came back. I no longer thought I was
invincible, but I started to appreciate every day and every breath. Even
on the mornings you wake up feeling bad, you are just pretty glad to get
up that morning. Now, I’ve got my wife and my children. I’m thankful
for every day now.”
The combination of receiving a kidney
transplant, meeting Amy and having two children are the best things to
ever happen to him, according to Mitch, who for 16 healthy years has
lived what was once only a distant, seemingly broken dream. “It was
wonderful,” he said of meeting a woman who could return his love. “I
don’t know how to put into words what Amy has meant to me. Before my
kidneys started failing again, when we were out in public, nobody had
any idea that I’d ever been sick at all. I would work with people for
years and they would never know that once I was literally within 48
hours of dying. A transplant, for someone who has been on dialysis, is
extremely liberating.”
Having children is something Mitch was sure he
would never do, so the experience of fatherhood is that much more
rewarding. “It was incredible,” he said. “I’d had a couple of
chemotherapies because I had a rejection episode when I first received
my kidneys. One of the side effects is it lowers a man’s sperm count.
So we were looking at the distinct possibility that I was not going to
have kids. When Amy became pregnant, we were elated. My daughter Lillie
is beautiful and is a wonderful child. It was a life changing
experience.”
Of course having a son completed his and Amy’s
dreams, according to Mitch. “Having Max was icing on the cake,” he
said. “When we had Lillie we had something neither of us thought would
happen and when Max was born, he truly completed our family. He has been
everything I could want in a son. Words are not adequate to describe
what my two children mean to me.”
Amy and the kids give Mitch a purpose and
drive, but he doesn’t like the way dialysis restricts his activities.
“Right now, I am tied for five hours a day, three days a week,” he
said. “You’re just stuck, tied to a machine.”
Five years ago, Mitch left the hot, sweaty
motorcycle mechanic industry at Alamo Cycle Sales, after 22 years, and
began a management job at Danbury Aviation. He serves as the Plant
Engineering Manager for Danbury. “My guys maintain the machines that
we make our products on,” he said.
To his amazement, people often asked Mitch how
long he has to have dialysis. “I tell them the honest answer,” he
said. “I’ll have to do this until I receive a transplant, or until I
die. Those are the only two options: you have a kidney transplant or you
die on dialysis. Dialysis cannot sustain you indefinitely because it
doesn’t filter everything. Your kidneys control your parathyroid gland
and a lot of chemical reactions within your body, including calcium,
phosphorous and potassium. They all work to balance each other and you
have to take binding agents to keep the phosphorous out of your body. If
you don’t, your calcium levels will drop and your body will start
robbing the calcium it needs from your bones, then it’s deposited in
your soft tissues—your lungs, your heart, your liver.”
Of course when a person’s organs harden from
deposited calcium, they don’t function as well, so their health
deteriorates until they eventually die, according to Mitch. “So while
some people can survive 10 to 15 years on dialysis, it is not something
that can extend your life indefinitely,” he said.
Even after his transplant in 1992, Mitch was
aware he was not completely cured. “They tell you it may or may not
last and the kidney disease you had can invade your new kidney,” he
said. “You take a ton of immunosuppressive drugs. When I received my
transplant, they were all steroids and you don’t have to read too many
newspapers to realize what steroids do to your body. They tear you down
as fast as they build you up, if they are anabolic. The
immunosuppressive steroids tear you down all the time. They are designed
to make you weaker so your body does not reject the organ. When you are
immune suppressed you are susceptible to all kinds of diseases. You have
to stay away from mold, funguses and you catch colds very easily.”
The proud father of two has had four cases of
pneumonia over the last 15 years and all of them put him in the
Methodist S & T Hospital for a week or two. “They warn you up
front that while you are 100 times better than you were on dialysis, you’re
not out of trouble and have to take a lot of drugs,” he said.
Mitch has health insurance, through his job at
Danbury Aerospace. If he did not have insurance, the anti-rejection and
chemical balancing drugs he takes would cost $3,500 a month, which
amounts to another complication of his kidney disease. “It is a steep
cost and that is something you have to figure out how to deal with. Of
course, my concern was to make sure I had insurance,” said the
transplant hopeful. “At one time, I saw a doctor every four weeks
because they want to keep checking on you in case you start to lose your
kidney function. I only had one functioning kidney but you can survive
on one-eighth of one good kidney. I still have three kidneys in me. The
doctors do not take your two native kidneys out, they just add one. Both
my native kidneys have long since atrophied down to golf ball size, and
now my transplanted kidney has failed me.”
It was during a routine doctor’s visit when
Mitch discovered his sister’s kidney was failing. “They drew blood
and everything looked fine,” Mitch said. “A couple of days later
(after receiving the blood test results), they called and told me, ‘You
need to go to the emergency room now.’ I felt fine. I went to the
emergency room and everyone was panicking. They monitor a muscle protein
in your blood called creatinine. The normal level is 0.8 to 1.2 and mine
usually ran 1.4 to 1.6, which is pretty good for someone with a
transplant. But, mine had jumped up to 5.6, which is a very high number.”
Mitch felt like a drowning man who had a
lifesaving rope jerked out of his hands. “I thought, ‘Oh crap’,”
he said. “I felt like the noose was tightening around my neck. I was
in the Methodist Specialty and Transplant Hospital for about a month,
off and on, starting Feb. 10, 2006. I had to go in every other day and I
had three different types of chemotherapy treatments. Basically, the
whole month of February and the first part of March, I was out of work
just going to the hospital every other day.”
Having a positive outlook on life, despite his
life-threatening condition, is Mitch’s way of coping day to day. “I
learned a long time ago you just get up every morning and go about your
business,” he said. “The things you can control, you control. The
things you can’t control won’t improve through worrying. I kiss my
wife and kids goodbye every morning and hope I get to kiss them hello
every night. That is the best I can do.”
However, Mitch admits he worries about the
future of his wife and children every minute. “I think about it
without trying to scare the kids to death,” he said. “I know I won’t
be around forever. I don’t know how long I’ll last on dialysis.
Dialysis has its own problems. It eats up your veins. Right now they are
giving me dialysis in my upper arm, through what is called an AV (arteriovenous)
fistula. That vein will eventually give out and they have to find
another vein. They move to your other arm, your lower legs, your upper
legs and then they put catheters in your chest. How long I’ll last is
something I don’t know. I just have to try to prepare everything for
the future as best I can and try not to make everybody crazy about it
now.”
Needing a kidney transplant and not knowing if
he will receive one in time to allow him to live a normal life span,
Mitch realizes the preciousness in every moment. “I’ve been slapped
around and understand we are mortal and everybody dies,” he said. “I
fully appreciate the life I have left.”
What would it mean if an article in his new
hometown’s newspaper led to his finding a compatible kidney donor?
“It would be incredible if I could find a donor,” answered Mitch.
“Don’t get me wrong, we have had a lot of people go and be tested --
a lot of my family members, tons of Amy’s family members, friends,
strangers. It is amazing. The silly part is, I’m a common blood type,
being O Positive. But since I have a common blood type that means there
are a lot of people out there also looking for O+ donors. On a common
waiting list like mine, the average wait time is five to seven years. I
don’t know if I have that long to wait. If I could get a kidney now,
with the modern drugs they have—they don’t have to use steroids
anymore—I could live at least 15 to 20 more years and live into my
60s. My kids would be grown. It would be a ton and a half off my
shoulders and Amy’s. She worries about me more than she should. I
couldn’t ask for a better life partner.”
One thing Mitch has going for him, in addition
to his wonderful wife and family, is his indomitable spirit. “I
understand people get depressed, but that is just not part of my makeup,”
he said. “I believe you fight until you just can’t fight. I’ve
never run up against a situation where I can’t keep fighting. I refuse
to quit. I just play the game differently if I have to. The only chance
I have to survive is to fight every day until I find a kidney. I do not
understand giving up. I know people get depressed, but I can’t let
that happen. I have too much to be grateful for.”
When kidneys fail, they do not make urine so
kidney patients limit their fluid intake as much as they can. “Whatever
fluids you put on over the weekend, or in the day and a half between
treatments, comes off in dialysis,” said Mitch. “But when you
dehydrate yourself too fast, your body cramps, you vomit and it tears
you up. The three days a week I take dialysis, I lose six to ten pounds
in weight and its leaves me light headed and with low blood pressure.
When it gets like that, Amy has to come into town to pick me up and I
don’t get off dialysis until 9 or 9:30. It is 10:30 or 11 before I get
home, so the kids end up spending the night at John and Mary’s.”
If people want to know if they can be a kidney
donor, and receive the satisfaction of knowing they helped a neighbor,
they should call the TTI transplant hotline number at 210-575-4483. When
the phone is answered, ask for Transplant Coordinator Oscar Nava, Linda
Zack, or Tina Martenson, and say you would like to be tested to donate a
kidney for Ruffus Mitchell (Mitch) Bales. The TTI hotline’s toll free
number is 1-800-888-0402. To research the issue, the TTI Web site is texastransplant.org/flash/kp/donor.html.
The feeling you’ll have from donating a
kidney for the husband, father, brother and son will be the positive
energy derived from giving the gift of life to a fellow human being. And
it is a fact, according to transplant literature, people with positive
attitudes from helping others, live longer themselves. If all you can do
is sign up on Texas’ afterlife organ donor list, to help others who
need transplants in the future, the easiest way is via the website at donatelifetexas.org.
For more information:
Visit:
texastransplant.org
donatelifetexas.org
kidney.org
organdonor.gov
or call:
Texas Transplant Institute
1-800-888-0402
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