FATHER’S DAY DREAM
Donor dad will walk kid, kidney down aisle
When Mark Braun looks at his 29-year-old daughter, Danielle, he sees his only child. He sees his co-worker at Rhode Island Hospital. He sees the softball player he coached for years. And he sees his kidney, a gift that saved her life. Braun, a 57-year-old from Cumberland, R.I., saw his daughter overcome medical problems since birth — recovering from an openheart surgery, one nonworking kidney and other complications that had doctors warning him of the dire chances she’d survive. Decades later in 2015, Danielle was quickly losing kidney function and facing a future on dialysis. Then she got a call that changed her and her father’s lives. Doctors at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston said her dad’s kidney was a match for the muchneeded transplant that could turn her life around.
“It was a no-brainer. I would give my life,” Mark Braun told the Herald yesterday.
“It was very easy once I found out I was a match. She’s our only child, 29 now. The best 29 years of my life.”
Danielle Braun said her father offered up his kidney immediately.
“He was totally ready,” she said, “He didn’t like seeing me be crying. He noticed the color in my face. I was getting really sick. He said, ‘Let’s just do this. I’m all for it.’ ”
The path to the transplant started during Danielle Braun’s first few minutes of life.
“She was born, she was a cardiac kid. ... She lost a kidney and had damage to another kidney and had a lot of medical problems,” said Mark Braun, who recalled how she was quickly sent to Boston Children’s Hospital for treatment.
“The doctor who sent her didn’t expect her to make it,” said Braun, a respiratory therapist. “She didn’t come home until she was 3 months old.”
Danielle Braun had her blood monitored constantly up to her 20s, when her sole kidney started deteriorating. She lost energy, was frustrated and fatigued.
Preparing herself for an operation to get a dialysis catheter, Danielle got the call from Dr. Stefan Tullius at Brigham and Women’s who said her father was a match.
“I feel like it was a miracle,” she said.
Waiting to be taken in for the transplant surgeries in December 2015, Danielle said the emotion broke open when her father went back into the operating room.
“We were waving at each other, laughing. They brought him back and first it hit me, a little bit. This was really happening. He was saving my life,” she said. “He is my hero.”
Tullius, the chief of transplant surgery at the Brigham, said the donation from a living family member boosted the chances that Danielle’s body would accept the organ.
“It is the opportunity of a living donated kidney that is significantly better than a deceased donor transplant,” Tullius said.
Eighteen months later, Danielle is planning her wedding and said her father has no shortage of humor about his donation.
“He goes, ‘ Can I have it back? Your energy is great. Mine sucks,’ ” Danielle said with a laugh. “I’m like, ‘There’s no refunds.’ ”
Danielle says her father often stands next to her on the side of the donated kidney.
“Sometimes,” she said, “he’ll press my stomach and say, ‘That’s my kidney.’ ”