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Georgia Sisters Give Kidneys to Dad and a Stranger

A kidney transplant is a serious surgical procedure. Michael McLean should know. He recently underwent his third kidney transplant. McLean has more kidneys than almost all people: 5. McLean elaborates: “One works, four do not.” McLean laughs. “But, yes, they leave them in.”

Background information discloses that McLean “was a senior at Auburn University in 1994 when he was diagnosed with the autoimmune disorder, Berger’s Disease.” He was told he needed a kidney transplant. At age 24, McLean’s first kidney “came from my sister, Michelle.” That kidney lasted eight years “before McLean, then in his early thirties and married with two young girls, had to begin kidney dialysis and the long wait for another one.”

McLean recalls, matter-of-factly, “I was on the list and after two years, I got the call one day and drove down to the hospital and got another kidney, from a deceased donor.” The second kidney’s renewal of life was “exciting and a relief,” but doubts invaded his mind regarding how the second kidney would hold up.

McLean’s two daughters, Anna Lee McLean, now 27 and a fourth-grade teacher in Nashville, and Mary Kate Imler, who is 24 and a UGA Law School student, “grew up watching their dad cope with kidney failure.” They sometimes sat with him during dialysis.

As reported, the second kidney lasted 20 years, “until Thanksgiving 2022, when McLean started feeling unwell and tired.” Lab work indicated that there was a problem: McLean was suffering “kidney failure for the third time and would now need yet another transplant.”

The daughters offered to help. Anna Lee McLean “turned out to be a match, but, anatomically, I was not the best match,” she says. Mary Kate Imler “was the better match of the two.” The transplant was scheduled for July 7, 2023, at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta. “In back-to-back surgeries, one of Mary Kate Imler’s kidneys was removed, taken to another operating room, then sewn into her father’s abdomen.” “Mary Kate woke up from surgery, asked about her dad, was told ‘yes,’ “and, she just immediately started crying.”

The miracle continued. Anna Lee McLean, who wanted to give a kidney to her dad, immediately raised the question: How do I help someone else? Seven weeks after her father’s transplant, Anna Lee “donated a kidney to a stranger, a woman she has learned is in her thirties, lives 600 miles away, and needed a lifeline.” Anna Lee said: “Now, I’m back to normal and giving someone else the chance to have their life back.”

D&B Staff

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