Renewal: Bridging the Gap Between Life and Death

As we follow the signs and exit towards Hackensack, the sleepy little town is still quiet, oblivious to the drama about to unfold on the second-floor surgical suite of Hackensack University Medical Center. Nestled alongside the Tomorrow’s Children Institute, the chocolate-brown building looks warm and inviting. The staff is equally attentive and welcoming even as they ready themselves for the kidney transplant that Renewal has orchestrated.

I watch, off to the side, as the altruistic donor, a yungerman and his wife, are ushered into the Surgical Admission Suite by the Renewal team. Menachem Friedman, program director, and David Schischa are on hand to welcome the couple as they get settled and checked in. The couple acts as if this is just another typical morning, not like they had just voluntarily signed themselves up to give of themselves so selflessly. There is something almost so simple about the way they are going about the check-in procedures; the ease with which they handle themselves that makes you think this is something they do all the time.

True to form, the lovely couple is only worried about my 4:30 wake-up and are only concerned that I should have everything I need to be able to relay the story of Renewal’s impact effectively. As if they owe Renewal for the opportunity to do this great deed. Which they do. But still.

The more I get to know them, the more I learn about everyday greatness — that it is so not mundane! The couple wish to remain completely anonymous and have gone to great lengths to do so, even telling their children they were going away on a little vacation between the Yamim Tovim!

Later, I express incredulity at the extent to which they want to give so fiercely, with no thought of recognition. Mendy Reiner, founder and chairman of Renewal, confides that whenever he walks in with a donor and his or her spouse to the large hospital lobbies, with rotundas like Columbia Presbyterian’s entranceway — which closely resembles an airport — he always marvels at the couple pushing their wheelie overnight-bag and thinks how, on the surface, it looks like they are about to embark on a vacation. He is struck every time anew, how no one would ever dream that this couple was voluntarily and wholeheartedly taking time off from work and willingly going into pain not only to save but ultimately to grant someone a whole new lease on life.

I am welcomed into the room to ask some questions. Now that the sun is up and day is breaking, the donor is putting on his tefillin and davening Shacharis. I am treated like their house guest. I assure the couple again that the honor is all mine and that there is nowhere else I’d rather be on the first weekday of the new year. But, I say, as I dive in to the interview, what drove them to be here?

The donor’s strong voice and cheerful demeanor underscore his words: “As you see, I am not the type who scares easily. But, I am afraid of the sight of blood. I always wanted to do something like this, to save lives, join Hatzolah or something, but I couldn’t. I had helped people on an emotional and spiritual level through my work, but I never was able to do anything on a physical level. I heard about Renewal and decided to get tested; did the swab testing and forgot about it for a while, as I did not think the timing was right for me to go through with it just yet.

“Then my wife pushed me to come forward sooner and say I was ready earlier when she saw Renewal’s general ads seeking donors to get tested. She said to me, ‘People whose life you can save need you now.’ I was at work when I got the call that I was a perfect match for a patient who was in renal failure, who had a very high level of antibodies and a slim-to-none chance of finding a viable match, and could I please come in for more testing?”

Kathleen Murdock, the living-donor coordinator, is there. She listens in as we continue discussing the incredible chain of events. With the impending Yamim Tovim and the scarcity of days available to schedule the transplant, the hospital was urging the couple to choose a day that fit their schedule. “Once my wife knew I was an ideal match who could prevent the recipient from starting dialysis, all thoughts of our personal convenience went out the window. She encouraged me to do it right away!” Kathleen interjects to say that we are certainly breaking records here today, as the standard lead time is six months and today’s transplant was coordinated in a mere 12 days because the donor was so adamant about moving forward as quickly as possible. “What can I say?” the donor jokes, “I was making everyone’s day (with my cross-matching); there was no sense in stopping so soon!”

Dr. Ravi Munver, Vice-Chair of the Department of Urology, and the surgeon who will be performing the first part of the transplant (on the donor), comes up as the recipient’s potassium level is reported, and at 3.78, he deems it “excellent, perfect.” He explains that this is the cue that he was waiting for. It’s an all-clear to get the donor’s surgery underway. In the short interlude that follows, I ask Dr. Munver what the risks are for a donor. He assures me, “There are no health risks. They should eat a balanced diet of normal amounts of salt, potassium and protein, just like everyone else. The only thing [the surgery] could potentially affect is that if they ever need to be on long-term medication, they should tell their doctor they only have one kidney, as they may have to adjust the medication levels.”

I then ask the doctor what his thoughts are when he is privy — like today — to play a role in an altruistic kidney donation. “It’s amazing. Simply incredible. In the 15 years that I have been at Hackensack, I would say that in the first 10 years we did none. In the past five years, we have seen more and more. I think society sees that the world is a tough environment. There’s terrorism, different situations around the world…weather-related, tragedies. I think we’re seeing more altruistic donations than ever before. When I see a story like we have today, I’m overwhelmed.”

The little cubicle is full of the donor’s sefarim, as well as his tallis and tefillin; there is very little else. I feel his confidence that he has everything he needs with his wife at his side and his lifelong companions of absolute, pure emunah and bitachon. The only time the donor agrees to any mention of his role is when Menachem Friedman asks if they can post his name for Tehillim. As was so indicative of the donor’s mindset throughout, I could imagine his answer before he even says, “How can I say no to Tehillim?”

As we wait for the call from the transplant team, the donor asks me to hand him his Mishnayos so that he can learn for a few minutes.

The call comes sooner than expected, and they ask him if he wants anything before they go. His response: “Just five minutes to learn something.” We step out to give him a few moments. It is only a little later, in the waiting area with his wife, that further proves how serious he is. The surgeon, Dr. Munver, comes to find her, and delivers her husband’s request that she please go buy him earphones and have them ready when he comes out of surgery, with a cryptic, “He said, ‘She will know what I mean.’” We all assume he wants a noise-blocking earplug type of device, or perhaps some relaxing music. But his wife knows otherwise. She says it’s for his phone, because he will be “listening to his learning.”

I reach into my huge tote bag, and it’s mostly empty. I have earphones, my ID, gum and some money. I don’t have my wallet, I have none of the other things I usually shlep around on a daily basis, just in case. I never ever — really never — use earphones, and never have them when I could have used them. For some reason I put them into my bag last night, just in case. Now I know why.

I leave my earphones as she gets busy orchestrating phone calls to wake her kids up for the 8:30 minyan, as her “vacation day” continues. Does she need anything to eat or drink? the Renewal team asks. It’s Tzom Gedaliah, she says simply.

We make our way to the recipient’s room, situated on a different floor, out of respect for the donor who wishes to remain anonymous. I meet a petite, elegant woman, the devoted wife of Rabbi Shimon Russell, LCSW, who has been struggling with a declining kidney for the past three years. The challenges of sheer exhaustion have depleted her, she says, both on a mental and physical level. To find a donor so quickly is an open miracle — a sentiment echoed throughout the day by the doctors who oversee these types of transplants all the time. I tell the Russells that I can’t imagine what they were feeling yesterday, on Rosh Hashanah, while davening. “Gratefulness. We are just so grateful.” Mrs. Yocheved Russell gets teary-eyed, but as she tells her surgeon, Dr. Michael Goldstein, when he arrives, “These are tears of joy. I’m not nervous. I’m just so excited!” It is then that I realize that her emotional state is one of trepidation and excitement at a new lease on life, b’ezras Hashem.

Rabbi Russell fills me in that they are here from Eretz Yisrael, having made aliyah recently. His wife runs a specialized school for teens, where she is the director. On August 1, when they arrived in the United States and were informed of the severity of her kidney disease, the Russells asked the hospital staff if it was possible to be back home in time for the school’s opening day, after Sukkos. The staff laughed at the idea. Now that day will, im yirtzeh Hashem, indeed be the day they are allowed to fly back.

Of the two, Rabbi Russell claims that his wife was always the more industrious and was always pushing him to do his work, so he is better known. But in fact, for her to sit on the couch and not have energy to work anymore was torture, due to her nature of getting things done.

Rabbi Russell tells me how this anonymous shidduch came to be. “I was in the airport coming back from a conference and I met an old friend of mine, Rabbi Sendy Ornstein, who I knew through some projects with Relief Resources. I told him about my wife’s prognosis and that she desperately needed a kidney. He was the one who told me about Renewal— I had never heard of the organization — and urged me to get in touch with its director. I sent Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz an email every day! Through Renewal we learned that her antibody levels were very high, and although she was on top of the list on a national level, she had only a 1:10,000 chance of being matched to a living donor with zero antibodies — an ideal kidney for her situation. That could take years on a national registry — if ever! Renewal walked us through every step. They helped me coin the words for newspaper ads — and then asked me to stop running them, as the response was so enormous they could not process the testing quickly enough! We are humbled at the response we received through Renewal.”

Dr. Michael Goldstein, Director of Kidney and Pancreatic Transplant, comes by with his transplant team and Dr. Rosenzweig, and walks Mrs. Russell through some last-minute details. He expresses amazement at the miracle that Renewal was able to provide them with multiple potential donors to cross-match his patient! Although two were nearly perfect and had borderline antibodies, it would have been a discussion of risk vs. benefit to do the transplant as early as possible. But to find a living donor, with zero antibodies, who was the perfect match is a miracle. Dr. Goldstein calls it a dedicated miracle, as the Renewal staff sat for hours to find a person with the right HLA, but ultimately, he proffers it was a sheer miracle that Renewal has such a robust list that is small in number in comparison to larger databases, but ultimately delivered the donor. “That I can work with religious men committed to the medical field, who I can have a high-level immunological conversation with so that we can run it with this cutoff or that cutoff — it’s amazing! Renewal’s database and its ability to cross reference the list really works! Hashem is orchestrating it all and it’s a miracle!”

Menachem Friedman concurs, and says that when people ask “How did you find so-and-so a kidney?” he responds: “G-d sent this one!” David Schischa tells me that in 2017 alone, 81 transplants were carried out by Renewal, an average of about two a week, with a stunning rate of success, baruch Hashem. Mendy Reiner shares with me the exciting news that the first international kidney swap between Canada and the United States was recently orchestrated through Renewal.

To date, it has been 12 successful years, baruch Hashem, since Renewal’s inception. It has grown to cover roughly 15 percent of all altruistic kidney donations in the United States and 60-70 percent of the New York-based transplants.

A day in the life of Renewal breeds hope, new life and a glorious kiddush Hashem. What better way to start off a year than by following such a selfless, hard-working team, that culminates in the matching of donors with grateful recipients?