New kidney renews hope

Mortician learns life lessons with second transplant

? Thanksgiving came early this year for Doug and Chris Sillin of Sterling.

They remember the day as Nov. 2, when they got a telephone call while Doug was undergoing dialysis at Hutchinson Hospital.

Wichita surgeon Dr. Charles Shield left a message saying, “We’ve found a kidney, and it looks very, very good.”

It was a call they had waited for through seven months of dialysis, after a first transplant from Chris failed because of a blood clot.

Doug Sillin checked into Via Christi Regional Medical Center’s St. Francis Campus that afternoon to prepare for a surgery that would last seven hours.

The kidney, from an unknown donor, began its job of flushing liquid immediately after the surgery.

On Tuesday, Doug Sillin, 52, and his wife recounted the story, which began in January 2004 when he started having bouts of unexplained fatigue and lethargy.

Doug, a diabetic, underwent lab tests that October to prepare for eye surgery.

In response to those tests, the couple was referred to a Wichita nephrologist who told them the unfathomable news: Doug was in end stage renal disease and his kidneys would fail within months. He needed dialysis or a kidney transplant.

At Christmastime, they met Shield and began several tests to prepare for a March 22 Easter weekend transplant, with Chris as the donor.

They endured a week of recovery together in the hospital. But two days later, the kidney failed. Doug underwent a second surgery to remove the kidney and then began dialysis.

During another surgery to install a permanent access for the dialysis, Doug went into pulmonary arrest because both lungs had filled with fluid.

“That’s the one that scared me the most,” Doug said.

Chris Sillin and their employees took over running the family funeral homes in Sterling and in Lyons. Doug and three dialysis buddies organized the “Band of Brothers,” who spent hours talking about eating, recipes and traveling.

But that’s the past. Living with his new kidney and looking with hope to the future, Doug said the ordeal taught him valuable lessons.

“I thought I was big enough to handle this, but that all went away quick when I couldn’t get well,” he said.

As a mortician, he’d had negative thoughts when he prepared the body of a transplant donor because of the extra work. Now, he’s an advocate for transplant donors.

“There’s a world of people out there who aren’t well, and I didn’t even know they existed,” he said.

As a funeral director, he thought working with grieving families had taught him about the fragility of life. Not so.

Family, employees, community, prayer groups, old classmates and friends, cards and letters are all a part of this Thanksgiving, Doug Sillin said.