SALT LAKE CITY — After witnessing Kim Marron suffer through nine hours of dialysis each day, Katie Voytovich donated a kidney to Marron, her best friend, on May 31. "She saw me at my worst," said Marron, a secretary at J.E. Cosgriff Memorial School. Both families belong to Saint Ambrose Parish. The women’s friendship began 10 years ago, when their sons met in kindergarten at Cosgriff in an odd twist of fate because Marron had considered sending her children to Our Lady of Lourdes School and Voytovich faced the choice of holding her son back a year before school started. Marron was born with kidney reflex, a genetic disorder that went undiagnosed and eventually damaged her kidneys. She had a transplant in 1988, when her brother donated a kidney that was supposed to last about 15 years, but lasted 23 years. "Things went well until about a year ago," she said. Marron mentioned her condition to Voytovich one day over coffee. Voytovich said she would get tested, but didn’t give it much thought because Marron said her brothers and sisters were a match and were willing to be tested again. The matter became serious last December, when Marron started producing an antibody that rejected her siblings’ kidneys. Her husband, daughter and other friends were tested but were not a match. Voytovich was a match and had passed the required psychological test. She was shocked when she received the call stating she was a good match. ‘How can a non-relative be a match?’ she thought. Marron said she was nervous for her friend and felt a little guilty, but "Katie did not drag her feet once," she said. "Obviously she was anxious; she has three boys and a husband. But seeing each other helped us get through it." On the days Voytovich was nervous about the upcoming surgery, she visited Marron. "Dialysis was consuming her life and disrupting her sleep," Voytovich said. "I would see her and that would bring me back to what this was really all about – my fear of a couple days of discomfort compared to her dialysis and the time it would take to find a new donor. ‘I can do this,’ I thought, and my family was incredibly supportive." St. Ambrose pastor Father Andrzej Skrzypiec, whose father had been on dialysis, was very supportive of Marron and Voytovich during the entire process. "He said it was meant to be," Marron said. Staying on dialysis was hard for Marron, she said, because she was missing out on her family members’ lives. "My husband was doing all the cooking, cleaning and taking care of the kids," said Marron. "I was just existing. It was a sacrifice, but they never complained." Voytovich is a nurse and knows the difficulties people endure who have a chronic illness. "There aren’t very many times you’re in a situation where you can impact somebody’s health like this," she said. "This whole journey has been amazing. I learned a lot about organ donation and was shocked that only half the people who are put on the transplant list get an organ. There are fewer donors today than there were 20 years ago because of the use of helmets and less traumatic brain injuries." Marron added the average wait for a person on the organ transplant list is two to three years. "Living donors play an important role in allowing people with end-stage renal disease to receive a transplant and we’ve talked about how our circumstances were put in place long before 10 years ago," Voytovich said.
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