Transplant Patient Gets ‘Best Christmas Present’: a U.S. Visa

A Honduran kidney transplant patient has won a longshot bid to return to the United States for medical treatment to keep the organ from failing.

Isaias Arita Bueso, 25, was granted a rare humanitarian parole by the Department of Homeland Security, said Peter Speicher, a San Antonio ophthalmologist who donated the kidney and has been trying to secure the young man’s return from Honduras since the summer.

Speicher said he got word late Wednesday from the office of a Texas senator who had been helping him with the case that federal officials had granted the permission. Recent medical tests in Honduras had shown that Arita Bueso’s body might be rejecting the kidney that Speicher donated last year.

“This is the best Christmas present I could ever have received,” Speicher said by telephone from San Antonio on Thursday. “Now it’s just a matter of getting him back and hoping there is enough kidney function left to salvage so that he doesn’t end up back on dialysis.”

The turn of events is the latest twist in the relationship between Arita Bueso and Speicher, who met by chance five years ago when the eye doctor was doing volunteer work in Honduras. The two struck up a correspondence, and Speicher eventually helped the former street kid obtain a student visa to study at a private high school in San Antonio. When the young man suffered kidney failure, Speicher turned out to be a match.

Arita Bueso, who had been living in the United States since 2002 and was set to start community college in Texas in the fall, returned to Honduras in June for what he thought would be a brief visit.

But U.S. consular officials twice refused to grant him a new student visa because of statements he made about his continuing need for medical care. U.S. law requires consular officials to deny student visas to foreigners they believe are high risks to stay on in the United States. That set off a scramble to keep him supplied with proper medical care in an impoverished nation where kidney patients often die for lack of treatment.

Speicher mounted an aggressive campaign to call attention to the case, contacting elected officials, humanitarian groups and the media about gaining a student visa for Arita Bueso.

But the young man’s deteriorating health is what finally moved immigration officials to grant humanitarian parole. Recent tests showed that Arita Bueso has high levels of a waste product in his bloodstream, an indication that his body may be rejecting the donated kidney.

Speicher said he expects Arita Bueso to arrive early next week in San Antonio, where he’ll be seen by kidney specialists.

“I don’t know how this saga is going to end,” Speicher said. “I told God a long time ago that he is in charge and I’m just along for the ride.”