A Thankful Life

Joe Pyrah | Daily Herald | Posted: Wednesday, November 21, 2007 11:00 pm

As you and millions of other Americans go to bed tonight, your kidneys will be kicking into overdrive. Turkey, yams, pie. It all has to be sent through the body's filter if you don't want to die of a nasty backup of toxic material. Few people know the feeling of having traitorous kidneys, and fewer still are as gratefully aware of a healthy kidney as BYU professor Diana McGuire.

Riding high to bed ridden

In 1968, in a small community 15 miles outside Blackfoot, Idaho, McGuire had the world in her hands. Recently graduated as a her high school valedictorian, she had a four-year scholarship to BYU.

"All those things that say 'Life is good for you,' " she says.

But shortly after, she noticed her feet swelling up. She started getting sick during her freshman year at BYU, reaching a point that she had to leave school.

In January of 1969 she was diagnosed at the University of Utah Medical Center with glomerulonephritis, a condition that results in excess fluid in the body and is caused by scarring on her kidneys, probably from a bout of strep throat. Almost four decades ago, treatment for kidney failure didn't consist of the refined medical procedures they do today.

"I was basically sent back home to die," McGuire said.

She was bedridden for six months, body filling up with fluids that her ruined kidneys couldn't handle. The fluid had to be drained from her lungs and the excess waste products started to affect her heart.

Perhaps worse, she watched as friends succeeded in school, at work and in their personal lives.

She went through stages, back and forth sometimes, from denial to anger to resolution. The bloating became so bad that even releasing emotional pressure was impossible, as crying would cause her eyes to swell shut for days.

"For me, everything I had was gone," she said.

A lifeline

On one of her trips to Salt Lake City, doctors suggested she try a take-home dialysis machine. The enormous contraption would cycle her fluids, filtering them through a cellophane wrap and tap water.

"It was not very technical. It was not very effective. But it kept me alive," she said.

By the spring of 1970 she was feeling well enough to try school again and made arrangements with BYU to store her dialysis machine and have an assistant help her use it. Three times per week, six hours each time, she would slide a tube into her right arm and let an inefficient machine do the work of her failed kidneys.

There were still a lot of hospital trips, including for congestive heart failure. Her grades slipped and any sort of life outside school and treatment was impossible.

"My whole goal, every single day, was to live one more day."

By Christmas things were grim and doctors were talking about taking extreme measures: a transplant.

Transplants, like home dialysis, were relatively rare and hardly guaranteed. Even if they found a good donor, even if the operation was a success, who was to say the same thing that attacked her kidneys in the first place wouldn't come back to attack a transplantfi

That's what big brothers are for

Her father's blood was the wrong type. Her mother, while a good match, was exhausted from taking care of her ailing daughter and considered risky. McGuire's sister was too young and so it fell to her brother Dan Harman.

Asking her brother to be donor was difficult. He had recently returned from an LDS mission, was attending college and was newly married. She was asking him not only to put his life on hold, but asking his wife to risk her husband.

Before surgery, McGuire had to put on enough weight to make it safe, climbing from 85 pounds to 98 pounds. The night before the transplant, doctors reassured her that Dan was a perfect match.

On May 28, 1971, a full day after the surgery, her blood checks were completely normal. The kidney was functioning "just like it was my own."

She was feeling so good and recovering so quickly that after a few weeks she was going nuts sitting around. She was also driving the hospital staff crazy.

"They finally had to send me down to occupational therapy to make rugs," she said. "I was reborn. I was reborn."

Bed ridden to riding high

The 21-year-old launched back into life with a vengeance. Aside from a near religious effort to take a related medication each morning, her life was nearly normal. She attacked school, receiving her bachelor's degree in dietetics and a master's in nutritional science.

She was hired at BYU to teach while her husband worked toward his degree.

Despite the successes, there was something else she and her husband wanted: children.

That posed new risks, as transplant patients of any sort rarely have children, and at that time had never had more than two.

McGuire has five ("which is definitely a world record") and has been profiled in medical publications including the American Journal of Transplantation. She has also spoken on behalf of the National Kidney Foundation. While it may not be a world record, living 36 years with a transplanted organ is also long past the average expectancy of 15 years.

She went back to teaching full time in 1988 and can be found at BYU three days a week while supervising internship training in Salt Lake City on the other days.

During the season of thanksgiving, she finds herself thinking about how blessed she is to be alive.

"Most people don't have to ask themselves that."