With kidney transplant canceled, Palmer man's life on hold again

PALMER TWP., Pa. — The fates, Melissa Hess can attest, can be unfathomably cruel.

For 16 years, Hess's son Aiden, 20, has battled an incurable kidney disease. Medicines, treatments and nine hours a day of dialysis that began 13 months ago had staved off the worst.

But the clock is ticking. When, she and husband, Christopher, wondered, would their prayers be answered?

Then, on the afternoon of Jan. 10, her cell phone rang.

The caller was from Temple University Hospital and said the words a mom longed to hear: “We have a kidney for Aiden.”

A donor had been found. Transplant surgery was set for Jan. 29. A family that had held its collective breath exhaled, peeked beyond the clouds and thanked the heavens.

However, 12 days after that phone call, the fates showed their cruel hand — the surgery was canceled.

Now, the waiting game resumes for the Hess family.

Cruel fate has redirected those initially answered prayers to the waiting room. A young man’s dreams for a more fulfilling life remain just that — a dream; life’s grand plans placed on hold.

'They just couldn't wait'

Melissa Hess said her son had been experiencing diarrhea since August.

“We had an appointment to check it out in November, but had to cancel it for a holiday trip to Tennessee to see my family," she said. "Then it was rescheduled for January at St. Luke’s.

“The doctors there said they wanted to do a colonoscopy to make sure everything was OK. And as it turned out, Aiden was diagnosed only with irritable bowel syndrome.”

But when the transplant surgeon at Temple learned the colonoscopy would be performed on Jan. 27, just two days before the scheduled transplant surgery, he canceled the transplant.

“I asked the transplant coordinator on the phone why they couldn’t just wait for the results of the colonoscopy before cancelling the surgery,” Melissa Hess said.

“Then the surgeon got on the phone and asked me something like, ‘What’s your problem?’ He was so cold. They never said why they couldn’t just wait for the results before canceling it.”

Hess paused for a moment on the phone, then added, “They just couldn’t wait.”

Melissa Hess said she and her husband Hess are experiencing various degrees of worry and anger.

Aiden was angry for a day, she said.

“That’s him,” his mother said. “He’s just like, ‘OK, something will come up.’”

“Aiden and his brother were planning things they wanted to do after the transplant. They were planning to get passes to swim at the Palmer pool.

'We had plans to go on a family vacation to Wildwood. Everything is back on hold.”

Waiting, searching continues

The search for a donor continues.

Melissa Hess posts Aiden’s story on social media. She said she’s been contacted by a few people seeking information about how to get tested to learn if they are a donor match.

“One woman from Washington, New Jersey, asked how she can find out if she's a match,” Melissa said.

“But she’s a single mother with two children, 8 and 11, works two jobs and has no family living nearby to help care for them while she recovers from the donor surgery.

“She said she watched videos of living donors about recovery from the surgery. She asked that since she’d be out of work for weeks, is there any type of [financial] compensation available to help with her bills.

"There isn’t, so …”

So the waiting and searching continues.

So, too, does a young man’s daily regimen of 12 pills and nine hours of dialysis — to keep something called IgA Nephropathy brought on by rapidly progressive glomerulonephritis in check.

To help keep the cruelest fate at bay.

Until the next time a worried mom's cellphone rings.