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Interview With Rob White, Liza Boswell

Aired December 19, 2003 - 14:36   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Kidney disease forced NBA star Alonzo Mourning to retire, but now he's getting life saving surgery. Mourning is undergoing a kidney transplant today. His former team, the New Jersey Nets, says his cousin is the donor. For more on the surgery, CNN's Holly Firfer joins us to tell us about it -- Holly.
HOLLY FIRFER, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Alonzo Mourning has a degenerative kidney disease focal glomerulosclerosis. It's a disease that attacks the tiny filters in the kidney and eventually renders them useless. He's getting a new kidney from his cousin.

We all have two kidneys and it's OK to function with just one. A single kidney transplant is the most frequent type of living donor transplant.

Although it's important to note this is not a cure for his disease, doctors say his prognosis for this kind of procedure is good. He should be on his feet in a couple of days. When you get an organ from a living donor, the chance of success and survival are quite high. Doctors predict new kidneys like this without any problems should be healthy for the next 20 to 30 years.

There are about 80,000 people waiting for transplants in the U.S., 50,000 need kidneys. In New York alone, patients can be on a waiting list for as long as five years. The problem, there is just not enough donors. Last year 12,801 people were organ donors. There were 24,900 organ transplants. Sadly, 6,187 people died while waiting for an organ.

As far as organs that can be transplanted, the heart, lungs, kidneys, pancreas, liver and intestines. Now some can be taken from living donors, but something like the heart needs to come from a cadaver.

You can also have tissue transplants. Those include eyes, skin, bone, heart valves and tendons. One thing that's important to note. Being an organ donor is more than filling out a form on your driver's license or a donor card. You must let a family member know because your next of kin will be asked at the time of death whether or not they can harvest your organs. So it's important they know your exact wishes.

PHILLIPS: Will Alonzo Mourning be able to play basketball again?

FIRFER: I'm sure some fans are hoping there. But in 1999, Sean Elliott who played for the San Antonio Spurs he left the team with the same disease as Mourning, had a transplant and went back and played for a year.

So I'm sure New Jersey Net fans are hoping Alonzo Mourning may come back, but every case is individual. I think the most important thing now is he gets healthy. But never say never.

PHILLIPS: There you go. We've been trying to get Sean Elliott, but everyone wants to interview him. Holly Firfer, thanks.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: It's hard to imagine a more emotionally wrenching decision, your brother or sister or parent terminally ill with kidney disease and the only sure-fire way to save their life is to give up one of your own organs. Would do you it?

A dozen years ago Liza Boswell made the selfless act when she donated her kidney to save the life of her brother, Rob White. He's here to offer proof that it works. Thanks for both of you for being with us today.

LIZA BOSWELL, GAVE KIDNEY TO BROTHER: Thank you for asking me.

ROB WHITE, KIDNEY RECIPIENT: Thanks for having me.

O'BRIEN: I can't imagine a more challenging decision. Liza, how did you become aware of the fact that Rob needed your help in such an important way?

BOSWELL: Well, this whole transplantation process is fraught with a lot of little white lies. They give you every opportunity to get out of the donation with a straight face. Robert actually didn't feel comfortable asking us for -- my whole family for a kidney. And some of us were matches and never knew it. He waited until he got very, very ill.

O'BRIEN: Can I interrupt? Why were you reluctant to go to them? And say, You're it?

WHITE: I wanted to receive a cadaveric transplant that somebody wasn't going to need before taking a living, related donor. My sister was going to have more children. It would interrupt her life. And so my doctors and I thought it over and thought it best to tell her that she wasn't a good match when in fact she was an acceptable match, wait for my health to decline and do what we needed to do when we needed to do it.

O'BRIEN: So you were really at a critical phase when finally you became aware of the need. So what went through your mind at that point, Liza?

BOSWELL: I was mad, to tell you the truth that he had -- I'd actually had another child in the interim, which was great, but I was that angry he allowed himself to become as sick as he had.

And a friend of mine was a psychologist in the renal transplant unit. And she said, get over it. They ask when they're ready. So I got over it.

O'BRIEN: So you weren't angry about it. Did you regret waiting as long as did you?

WHITE: Oh, no, not at all. I amused myself after I got the transplant, I went back to graduate school. But it was a time in my life to reflect on things, to get into the community of transplant kind of folks and just to prepare for my transplant when it was time.

But it was also a strange time. I had a lot of time on my hands and very little money. Now I have no time on my hands and no money. So I think you know how that is.

(LAUGHTER)

O'BRIEN: Liza, the experience itself, one would think it would be undergoing a tremendous physical burden to give up a kidney.

BOSWELL: Really not as bad as having a baby. And so gratifying that -- it's one of the most gratifying things that ever happened to me. It was a gift to me to see my brother going from being extremely ill to being the pain in the neck that he is now.

(LAUGHTER)

BOSWELL: That's a good thing.

O'BRIEN: I wonder what that's like, what kind of a bond a sibling has after something like this. We all have familial bonds going into something like this. But has your relationship been substantively different?

BOSWELL: He's beholden to me for the rest of his life.

WHITE: I can't tell her when she does anything wrong. Nothing contradictory or -- excuse me.

O'BRIEN: Turn that off.

WHITE: But it's -- no. I'm -- I was given the opportunity raise her children, which also happened to be future donors, if need be. And so we have a very close relationship and a close bond and we live in the same town now so that we get to do a lot of family things together. And it's just awfully nice to have that bond and that relationship.

O'BRIEN: How common is it for this to happen? It's hard to pin this down, because I don't think numbers are accurately kept because it's kind of between families. Do you know? Just anecdotally?

BOSWELL: Anecdotally I will say that I have practiced law at two large law firms. My former firm had out of several hundred lawyers, three living donors. And my current firm, the Smith Morloff (ph) firm, has two living donors out of 117 lawyers.

O'BRIEN: That's interesting.

BOSWELL: Those are pretty good odds. O'BRIEN: Families do make this decision in a positive way. I mean be very difficult thing to say no to. Wouldn't it? I mean if the tables were turned.

WHITE: I thought about that often. I don't know. I don't know until I'm faced with it. It's like any question. What would do you if you had cancer? You don't know until you get there.

I don't know if I would give my brother or my mother -- I would give my daughter a kidney. I can tell you that. And I think my sister having had children before, and having that kind of love for people, it wasn't a question for her. But at the time, I was an immature in my young middle 20s and I don't know if I could have done it or not.

O'BRIEN: Now we're talking about something that happened a dozen years. Does a year go by where you don't stop and take a moment to think about what happened?

BOSWELL: I don't think about it until the flowers show up.

WHITE: I don't think about it until I look in the mirror in the morning and I go, Holy cow.

No. I think about it all the time. Its -- I think about how people that -- the kids that I know that are waiting for transplants. I met my wife working at a camp for kids with kidney disease. And up until that time, I thought, Poor me, I feel so bad all the time.

I went to that camp, there were a whole lot of people out there worse off than I am. I'm one of the healthy, lucky ones. That's why I went to work there. My transplant team said go work at that camp so you can be a role model for the other kids coming along. I was very happy to do that and I want to do it again.

O'BRIEN: You must savor your time together in new ways.

WHITE: You bet.

BOSWELL: We do. Can I put in a plug for the Kidney Foundation?

O'BRIEN: Please do.

BOSWELL: I serve on the board of the Kidney Foundation of Georgia. And we raise money, conduct research, urge, urge, urge you to sign your donor card. It's -- this is mixing my metaphors but it's no skin off your back. There is a tremendous need in Georgia. Dialysis units are terribly overtaxed. Urge you to consider signing your donor card and consider the good work that the Kidney Foundation is doing.

O'BRIEN: Lots of people die on that list. Don't they?

BOSWELL: They sure do.

WHITE: I'm afraid so. O'BRIEN: All right, Rob White, Liza Boswell.

BOSWELL: Thank you, Miles.

O'BRIEN: It's a great story. Thanks for sharing it with us.

WHITE: Thank you for having us, Miles.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired December 19, 2003 - 14:36   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Kidney disease forced NBA star Alonzo Mourning to retire, but now he's getting life saving surgery. Mourning is undergoing a kidney transplant today. His former team, the New Jersey Nets, says his cousin is the donor. For more on the surgery, CNN's Holly Firfer joins us to tell us about it -- Holly.
HOLLY FIRFER, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Alonzo Mourning has a degenerative kidney disease focal glomerulosclerosis. It's a disease that attacks the tiny filters in the kidney and eventually renders them useless. He's getting a new kidney from his cousin.

We all have two kidneys and it's OK to function with just one. A single kidney transplant is the most frequent type of living donor transplant.

Although it's important to note this is not a cure for his disease, doctors say his prognosis for this kind of procedure is good. He should be on his feet in a couple of days. When you get an organ from a living donor, the chance of success and survival are quite high. Doctors predict new kidneys like this without any problems should be healthy for the next 20 to 30 years.

There are about 80,000 people waiting for transplants in the U.S., 50,000 need kidneys. In New York alone, patients can be on a waiting list for as long as five years. The problem, there is just not enough donors. Last year 12,801 people were organ donors. There were 24,900 organ transplants. Sadly, 6,187 people died while waiting for an organ.

As far as organs that can be transplanted, the heart, lungs, kidneys, pancreas, liver and intestines. Now some can be taken from living donors, but something like the heart needs to come from a cadaver.

You can also have tissue transplants. Those include eyes, skin, bone, heart valves and tendons. One thing that's important to note. Being an organ donor is more than filling out a form on your driver's license or a donor card. You must let a family member know because your next of kin will be asked at the time of death whether or not they can harvest your organs. So it's important they know your exact wishes.

PHILLIPS: Will Alonzo Mourning be able to play basketball again?

FIRFER: I'm sure some fans are hoping there. But in 1999, Sean Elliott who played for the San Antonio Spurs he left the team with the same disease as Mourning, had a transplant and went back and played for a year.

So I'm sure New Jersey Net fans are hoping Alonzo Mourning may come back, but every case is individual. I think the most important thing now is he gets healthy. But never say never.

PHILLIPS: There you go. We've been trying to get Sean Elliott, but everyone wants to interview him. Holly Firfer, thanks.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: It's hard to imagine a more emotionally wrenching decision, your brother or sister or parent terminally ill with kidney disease and the only sure-fire way to save their life is to give up one of your own organs. Would do you it?

A dozen years ago Liza Boswell made the selfless act when she donated her kidney to save the life of her brother, Rob White. He's here to offer proof that it works. Thanks for both of you for being with us today.

LIZA BOSWELL, GAVE KIDNEY TO BROTHER: Thank you for asking me.

ROB WHITE, KIDNEY RECIPIENT: Thanks for having me.

O'BRIEN: I can't imagine a more challenging decision. Liza, how did you become aware of the fact that Rob needed your help in such an important way?

BOSWELL: Well, this whole transplantation process is fraught with a lot of little white lies. They give you every opportunity to get out of the donation with a straight face. Robert actually didn't feel comfortable asking us for -- my whole family for a kidney. And some of us were matches and never knew it. He waited until he got very, very ill.

O'BRIEN: Can I interrupt? Why were you reluctant to go to them? And say, You're it?

WHITE: I wanted to receive a cadaveric transplant that somebody wasn't going to need before taking a living, related donor. My sister was going to have more children. It would interrupt her life. And so my doctors and I thought it over and thought it best to tell her that she wasn't a good match when in fact she was an acceptable match, wait for my health to decline and do what we needed to do when we needed to do it.

O'BRIEN: So you were really at a critical phase when finally you became aware of the need. So what went through your mind at that point, Liza?

BOSWELL: I was mad, to tell you the truth that he had -- I'd actually had another child in the interim, which was great, but I was that angry he allowed himself to become as sick as he had.

And a friend of mine was a psychologist in the renal transplant unit. And she said, get over it. They ask when they're ready. So I got over it.

O'BRIEN: So you weren't angry about it. Did you regret waiting as long as did you?

WHITE: Oh, no, not at all. I amused myself after I got the transplant, I went back to graduate school. But it was a time in my life to reflect on things, to get into the community of transplant kind of folks and just to prepare for my transplant when it was time.

But it was also a strange time. I had a lot of time on my hands and very little money. Now I have no time on my hands and no money. So I think you know how that is.

(LAUGHTER)

O'BRIEN: Liza, the experience itself, one would think it would be undergoing a tremendous physical burden to give up a kidney.

BOSWELL: Really not as bad as having a baby. And so gratifying that -- it's one of the most gratifying things that ever happened to me. It was a gift to me to see my brother going from being extremely ill to being the pain in the neck that he is now.

(LAUGHTER)

BOSWELL: That's a good thing.

O'BRIEN: I wonder what that's like, what kind of a bond a sibling has after something like this. We all have familial bonds going into something like this. But has your relationship been substantively different?

BOSWELL: He's beholden to me for the rest of his life.

WHITE: I can't tell her when she does anything wrong. Nothing contradictory or -- excuse me.

O'BRIEN: Turn that off.

WHITE: But it's -- no. I'm -- I was given the opportunity raise her children, which also happened to be future donors, if need be. And so we have a very close relationship and a close bond and we live in the same town now so that we get to do a lot of family things together. And it's just awfully nice to have that bond and that relationship.

O'BRIEN: How common is it for this to happen? It's hard to pin this down, because I don't think numbers are accurately kept because it's kind of between families. Do you know? Just anecdotally?

BOSWELL: Anecdotally I will say that I have practiced law at two large law firms. My former firm had out of several hundred lawyers, three living donors. And my current firm, the Smith Morloff (ph) firm, has two living donors out of 117 lawyers.

O'BRIEN: That's interesting.

BOSWELL: Those are pretty good odds. O'BRIEN: Families do make this decision in a positive way. I mean be very difficult thing to say no to. Wouldn't it? I mean if the tables were turned.

WHITE: I thought about that often. I don't know. I don't know until I'm faced with it. It's like any question. What would do you if you had cancer? You don't know until you get there.

I don't know if I would give my brother or my mother -- I would give my daughter a kidney. I can tell you that. And I think my sister having had children before, and having that kind of love for people, it wasn't a question for her. But at the time, I was an immature in my young middle 20s and I don't know if I could have done it or not.

O'BRIEN: Now we're talking about something that happened a dozen years. Does a year go by where you don't stop and take a moment to think about what happened?

BOSWELL: I don't think about it until the flowers show up.

WHITE: I don't think about it until I look in the mirror in the morning and I go, Holy cow.

No. I think about it all the time. Its -- I think about how people that -- the kids that I know that are waiting for transplants. I met my wife working at a camp for kids with kidney disease. And up until that time, I thought, Poor me, I feel so bad all the time.

I went to that camp, there were a whole lot of people out there worse off than I am. I'm one of the healthy, lucky ones. That's why I went to work there. My transplant team said go work at that camp so you can be a role model for the other kids coming along. I was very happy to do that and I want to do it again.

O'BRIEN: You must savor your time together in new ways.

WHITE: You bet.

BOSWELL: We do. Can I put in a plug for the Kidney Foundation?

O'BRIEN: Please do.

BOSWELL: I serve on the board of the Kidney Foundation of Georgia. And we raise money, conduct research, urge, urge, urge you to sign your donor card. It's -- this is mixing my metaphors but it's no skin off your back. There is a tremendous need in Georgia. Dialysis units are terribly overtaxed. Urge you to consider signing your donor card and consider the good work that the Kidney Foundation is doing.

O'BRIEN: Lots of people die on that list. Don't they?

BOSWELL: They sure do.

WHITE: I'm afraid so. O'BRIEN: All right, Rob White, Liza Boswell.

BOSWELL: Thank you, Miles.

O'BRIEN: It's a great story. Thanks for sharing it with us.

WHITE: Thank you for having us, Miles.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com