After it took Tara Dennis of Kokomo about a year to meet criteria to be placed on the national transplant list, it took 48 hours for her to be told she had a match. Dennis, shown in this Feb. 21, 2024 photo, underwent a successful lung transplant in 2023.
Tim Bath | Kokomo Tribune
A few years ago, Kokomo resident Tara Dennis was living life like a lot of people tend to do, shuffling back and forth from work or watching her grandchildren par t icipate in sporting events and school functions.
Then in 2016, the bottom dropped out.
“My lung collapsed,” she said. “It was out of the blue. So I ended up in the hospital. They got my lung back up, and then they sent me home.”
But Dennis eventually ended up back at the hospital, where she stayed for 16 days and ultimately had surgery to glue a hole shut in one of her lung’s membranes.
Dennis recalled the doctor telling her at the time her lungs were bad.
And by her own admission, she said she figured as such due to a multiple-year smoking habit, but she’d soon discover how bad they actually were.
Flash forward to March 2022. Dennis became very sick and ended up in urgent care, and medical staff eventually sent her to a pulmonologist.
“My first visit,” she said, “they told me I needed a lung transplant.”
Dennis said she still remembers sitting in that doctor’s office and crying over the news.
“I was terrified. Terrified,” she said. “And then I got home, and my husband was like, ‘Oh, my God, what’s wrong?’ And I told him, and then he became very upset. He had no idea either. So yeah, we both thought I was gonna die before I got a transplant. I was sure of it.”
But before she could get on the national transplant list, Dennis needed to get her body physically ready to receive a lung.
And that’s not easy if you can’t breathe, she noted.
It’s even more difficult when you’re lugging around an oxygen tank.
It ultimately took Dennis about a year to meet criteria, and she was placed on the transplant list.
And then she waited, believing it would take months to hear any news.
But it took about 48 hours. “I was on that list for two days,” she said “Two days. And when they told me, I was like, ‘Are you serious? Is this a joke?’ I had never heard of such a thing.”
And Dennis — who thought she’d never make it off the transplant list — underwent a successful lung transplant Sept. 1, 2023.
“I’m a new person,” she said smiling as she met with the Tribune earlier this month at Community Howard Regional Health, where Dennis has her rehabilitation. “I have good days, and some days are still not so good, but I take the good days when they come. But I can walk through my house and not be out of breath, and I can play outside with my grandkids. I’ve gotten life back.”
There’s hope, Dennis added, where there once was depression.
Because that’s the power of organ donation.
And people seem to understand that power, officials note.
In 2023, the Indiana Donor Network — formulated in 1987 with a mission to save and enhance lives through organ, tissue and eye donation — broke records for the eighth consecutive year, with 1,134 organs donated from across the Hoosier state.
But according to the website organdonor.gov, the national transplant waiting list — organized through the United Network for Organ Sharing — currently boasts over 100,000 individuals who are looking for organs such as kidneys, the pancreas, heart, lungs, liver and intestine.
In Indiana alone, that number is roughly 1,000.
Each year, about 17 people die while waiting to receive an organ, per national statistics.
That’s 17 parents, siblings, spouses or friends.
For experts in the field, that’s 17 too many.
LIFE ON THE LIST
Kelly Tremain is the president and CEO of the Indiana Donor Network, and she said the organization’s end goal is pretty clear.
“We want to end the wait list for transplants,” she said, though she also acknowledged it’s easier said than done.
Tremain then took a few moments to detail what life is like for so many on that list.
“The list varies depending on how sick you are and which organ you’re waiting for,” she explained. “Sometimes people wait three or four years for a kidney transplant and just have to wait days or weeks for a heart or lung if they’re really, really sick. It also depends on their blood type, their height, their weight, even where they are in the country.”
But the real problem, she noted, is there’s a small portion of people who die in such a way they can donate their organs.
So it essentially becomes a supply and demand issue.
“With people living longer, the medical history and the disease processes that people have, more people just keep getting added to the transplant list,” Tremain said. “But our donors, obviously while we’re increasing the number of donors and the number of organs transplanted, the people getting added is outpacing the number of transplants.”
For example, Tremain noted, there were 45,000 organs donated nationwide in 2023.
But when there are over 100,000 people actively waiting for those organs, it’s hard to get ahead.
And that’s where you can play a role.
HOW TO SAVE A LIFE
Dr. Islam Ghoneim is the program and surgical director for the adult and pediatric kidney transplant program at Ascension St. Vincent, and he said that while the medical community has made great strides in raising awareness about organ donation in recent years, there is still a ways to go.
The doctor also noted that both the living and deceased can donate organs, but the criteria for each one is a bit different.
“A deceased donor can donate two kidneys,” he said. “They can donate a whole liver or segments of the liver. They can donate their heart, two lungs, a pancreas, a small intestine. So you can imagine how many people benefit from just one organ donor. They can be a tissue donor as well, so they could donate their corneas and other tissues recovered after the organs are retrieved.
“Now a living donor, they can donate one kidney or a segment of their liver,” Ghoneim added. “But when somebody walks into the office, and they want to be an organ donor, we have to make sure they’re healthy otherwise … to make sure that the individual goes on to lead a healthy and uninterrupted life after they donate.”
And exact match isn’t necessarily a requirement to donate, Ghoneim stressed.
This is also true in the case of family members.
“What we need is a compatible blood type,” he said. “And the family is often the first place to look because siblings will share a lot of commonalities when it comes to the antigens that make up a unique individual. Parents will also share a lot of those commonalities, so the likelihood is very high there.”
But while blood types have to be compatible and the organs have to match, they don’t need to be an identical match, he noted.
In the case of kidney donation — the organ with the biggest need in terms of individuals on the transplant list — Ghoneim explained that even if a living donor comes forward but is not a match for his or her intended recipient, that donor can still help save someone else’s life through their donation.
“We can always put them in a national swap,” he said. “What that means is the person’s kidney would get allocated or be assigned to a location where it matches, and we would get a kidney back for the intended recipient that matches them.”
And there’s even more flexibility with deceased organ donors, Ghoneim said.
“When we’re looking at a person that will no longer need function of their organs,” he explained, “we have more room to say, ‘Well, this person may have had diabetes or may have had high blood pressure, but their organs are still good.’ We can still take organs from those individuals.”
Because in the end, being an organ donor is more than putting a mark on the back of your driver’s license or writing it down on a form.
It’s about saving lives and giving someone else the gift of time.
POWER OF SECOND CHANCES
Dennis doesn’t know a lot about the man who donated a lung so she could breathe again.
She knows his first name, and she knows he loved the beach.
And Dennis hopes to honor his gift to her by doing some of the same activities he liked to do, because the pair are “buddies,” for life now, she noted.
There are so many stories out there like hers too, which is why Ghoneim and Tremain said the mission for more organ donors is as strong as it’s ever been.
“We’ve had a significant increase in the people in Indiana who’ve said they want to be donors,” Tremain said. “It’s really amazing that people are willing to donate as much as they are, and it really shows the selflessness and generosity of our donors and their families who want to give someone else a second chance at life.”
Ghoneim agreed. “There is so much good that you can leave behind by becoming an organ donor,” he said. “Your gift for organs that you no longer need or will need will leave such a profound effect on this world. So knowing that this will only be done in situations where it’s confirmed you are no longer in need of those organs, it’s a gift that’s so endearing and so profound.
“It’s the ultimate gift,” Ghoneim added. “It’s the gift of life.”
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