Perfect match: Husband’s kidney saves wife
Monica Calle gave her husband three children during their long marriage — and as their 23rd wedding anniversary approached, Cesar Calle gave her a kidney.
On Tuesday, the Weston couple agreed to call it even.
“I feel like a million dollars,” Monica said, three weeks after the transplant. “And I think I look like a million bucks, compared to before.”
The Calles spoke from Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood about Monica’s nearly three-year journey to good health and freedom from dialysis. The couple were joined by the medical team that guided their
Feb. 19 surgeries.
“To find a match between spouses is very unusual but very lucky for us to be able to find that,” said medical team leader Dr. Juan Arenas, a surgeon and chief of the hospital’s Memorial Transplant Institute.
Monica, 39 — a Memorial Regional Hospital employee who schedules patients’ surgeries there — is the first successful live donor kidney transplant patient at the Institute.
And while it was a day for celebration, Monica recalled frequent pain over 32 months of nightly dialysis that nearly caused her to give up the treatment for polycystic kidney disease. Monica said she inherited the disease from her mother and received her diagnosis a decade ago.
But in December, the Institute staff found that Cesar, 52, a computer network technician, would be able to give her one of his kidneys. The Calles are not only well-suited in love, but their lab tests — of blood and antigens — said they were a match for a kidney donation, too.
“Little did we know 23 years ago that this was going to be the angel to save my life,” Monica said. “I felt like I just won the lottery. I started dreaming of what my future would look like, not having to do dialysis. The fact that I can actually travel now and not worry about carrying boxes with me or supplies or worry if it’s gonna get lost. I felt so free.”
Cesar, who had offered to donate his kidney to his wife but needed a moment for the news to sink in, said: “For me to do this, it was big. I was shocked. [I thought] it’s not real, this is not happening.” But it was, and it did. Transplant surgery is “a team sport,” Arenas said. It took 30 health care professionals — from a dietitian to social worker to nurses, surgeons and other staff — to prepare the couple, get them through their procedures and to have such good recoveries they left their respective hospital beds and went home earlier than expected.
The Calles’ transplant experience could have been fraught with emotional minefields. Not only did they have to worry about their spouse’s 2.5 hour, major surgery, but what if his kidney didn’t function for her? On Tuesday, such worries seemed beside the point.
“The Calles have great attitudes, were very positive before the surgeries and she believed in us, and that tells you they were prepared and willing to do that,” Arenas said.
“There was an opportunity for a second life for me,” Monica said.
The couple were effusive in their praise of the Institute, their surgeons and the hospital staff. This year’s wedding anniversary on Thursday will be especially meaningful.
“That’s reborn faith, you might call it,” Cesar said. “It brings me joy and happiness. And it brings us closer together. Not just physically, obviously, but also spiritually.”
There are 100,000 people across the country waiting for an organ transplant, and about 80 percent of those are waiting for kidneys that they may become too sick or too old to be able to get, according to Arenas. There is a growing need for the Institute’s services in Broward County, he said. It also offers to transplant kidneys for kids and performs pediatric and adult heart transplants. A future goal is to help patients with diseased livers get new organs.
Monica knows how lucky she is, and offered hope to those who are waiting like she was three months ago, before receiving Cesar’s gift.
“I was in a lot of pain, I was scared, and I didn’t know if there was gonna be a miracle for me,” she said. “I’m sure a lot of us that are in this situation always wonder, ‘When is our miracle happening?’ And I tell everybody, ‘Just hang on tight, fight your fight, because we are warriors, and your miracle will happen.’ ”