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Fresno woman’s Magelinde "Helen" del Castillo soon will be back to long evening walks and other favorite activities because of a stranger's generosity.
gift gives Mililani
woman new life
A stranger becomes a friend
More donors sought
through her donation of a kidneyBy Helen Altonn
haltonn@starbulletin.comThe Mililani resident, 54, began having kidney problems 26 years ago when pregnant with her second son. "A year ago, I was told I either had to go on dialysis or get a transplant," she said.
After six months of dialysis, her doctor at Tripler Army Medical Center recommended a transplant.
With a big family of potential donors, she said she didn't wait for her name to come up on a list for a match. But 12 relatives and friends were tested and rejected, including her three sons.
"I had a problem with Asian donors, with my blood trying to fight theirs because I had certain antibodies," she said.
Help came unexpectedly from Fresno, Calif., where Thomasito del Castillo, 26, was attending school. He worked part-time at a mall where he became friends with Shannon Gillis, 25, who also worked at a shop there.
When del Castro told Gillis of his mother's plight, she said, "Maybe I should get tested. I feel like I'm the one."
Why would she give a kidney to someone she never met?
"Why not?" Gillis said in a telephone interview. "I just think people don't help people enough ... It was just important for me to give Helen's family the chance to have her around more."
She said her husband, Christian, "just knew in his heart it was the right thing to do," but members of their families "were really scared because I've never been in a hospital." Also, her father's side of the family has many health problems, she said. "For me, it was all the more reason to do it."
Gillis was admitted to St. Francis Medical Center March 21, and del Castillo received one of her kidneys the next day in a two-hour operation. The key doctors were Whitney Limm, medical director of the Kidney Transplant Program, and transplant surgeon Linda Wong.
"Actually, the first couple days were really tough for me," Gillis said. She became sick because the medication wasn't working properly, but she recovered fast, she said.
"I was up mopeding and shopping a couple days after I was released from the hospital. Dr. Limm said, 'I can't believe you're up so fast.'"
Del Castillo, recuperating at home, said: "It's a miracle. Where do you get people like this out of the blue? It's kind of hard to accept a gift like that. It made me feel sort of guilty. If it's from family, it's easier, but from somebody you don't even know, that I haven't even met..."
Along with the kidney, the mother of three sons acquired a daughter, telling Gillis, "You are part of our family now ... This kidney is really working fine in me."
"It has a new home now," Gillis responded.
The Fresno couple honeymooned in Hawaii a year ago, never thinking they'd be back so soon, Shannon Gillis said.
They stayed at the del Castillos' home. Parcifal, 30, took time off from his job and joined brothers Thomasito and Percipo, 21, in showing the couple around. "We tried to make them as happy as possible over here," Helen del Castillo said.
"Every credit in the world should go to her. Without her, I would still be suffering. 'Thank you' is not even the right word for that kind of person ... All I can say is 'you are my angel.' It is not easy to give part of yourself to a stranger."
"If more people understand that it's possible for strangers to do this, it might help other people to think, 'I can do that,'" del Castillo added.
"Dialysis really tests you, just so you could live" and many young people are going through it, she said. "I was one of the lucky ones."
Del Castillo said she is getting stronger and wants "to run out and do jogging" when she wakes up at 6 a.m. But she was told to be careful for four to six months, she said. "I'm hoping it will be four months. I'm not a stay-at-home type of person."
She hopes to return to her job in the travel department at Hickam Air Force Base.
"It was a long journey, but it went real fast," Gillis said. "I can't believe it came and went, but Helen is doing wonderful. She's going to come see us when she is better and can travel. We got us a family now."
She also returned home with "a whole new perspective of life," saying she plans to exercise and get back in shape. "In a heartbeat, I'd do it all over again," she said, adding that she's going to get tested as a bone marrow donor in a couple years.
"It seems such an easy thing to do ... to save a person's life. All you figure is, if someone in your family was sick, wouldn't you help them if you could?"
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More donors sought
for kidney transplantsLiving donors could give hope of longer and better lives to about 315 Hawaii patients waiting for kidney transplants.
Only about 45 such transplants are done each year at St. Francis Medical Center, said Joyce Nekoba, kidney transplant coordinator.
About half of the organs are donated after a death and the other half from living donors, she said. She described three types of living donors: related, unrelated and altruistic.
Unrelated donors are rare. These are people who hear of someone's need for a kidney and become acquainted with them after a transplant, Nekoba said.
Shannon Gillis of Fresno, Calif., who gave a kidney to Magelinde "Helen" del Castillo of Mililani, is considered an unrelated donor, she said.
"A true altruistic donor," Nekoba said, "is somebody who calls and says, 'I want to give a kidney to somebody.'" The donor in this case "has no emotional ties to anybody."
St. Francis this year had the first altruistic kidney donor in the history of its transplant program, which began in 1969, she said.
Rigorous testing is done to make sure everything is OK physically and mentally with living donors, Nekoba said. The tissue is typed and matched with the list by the United Network for Organ Sharing.
Since the donor will be left with only one kidney, she said, "We don't want anything to go wrong in the future ... We do have a pretty conservative program when it comes to donor workups. We want a win-win situation."
Helen Altonn, Star-Bulletin