SIMI VALLEY : Woman to Donate Kidney to Sister

A Simi Valley woman and her sister plan to be laid out on operating tables in a UCLA surgery center Wednesday, put to sleep and opened up so one can receive an extraordinary gift. Angie Tomlin, 29, of Ashland, Ore., has volunteered to donate one of her healthy kidneys to her sister, 36-year-old Karen Drumheller of Simi Valley, whose own kidneys have failed after 19 years of diabetes.

“I love my sister very much, and I want to see her healthy,” Tomlin said Thursday. “She’s a really active person, and lately she just hasn’t been able to do all the things she’d like to do, so I want to help her out.”

Doctors told her she will be able to function normally on just one kidney, and the one she donates will help her sister return to a normal life, said Tomlin, a nurse’s aide.

“The right kidney grows to compensate and take up the work the left kidney did,” Tomlin said.

Drumheller, who has been forced to cleanse her blood with dialysis treatments every four hours for nearly two years, said she is thrilled with her sister’s gift.

“What do I say? It’s just wonderful,” Drumheller said. “I don’t know how to thank her.”

Local doctors were skeptical, telling Drumheller the diabetes would only kill the implanted healthy kidney, she said.

But after intensive medical tests, UCLA specialists cleared the sisters for the operation.

Once the incisions are made in separate operating rooms, one of Drumheller’s damaged kidneys will be removed, as will her sister’s healthy left kidney.

Tomlin’s healthy kidney will be flushed out, put on ice and taken across the hall to her sister’s operating room, where surgeons will implant it in Drumheller.

Both women will be kept in the hospital for observation for six days and, if all goes well, sent home for four to six weeks of recovery.

In addition, doctors will transfuse one pint of blood from Tomlin to Drumheller the day of surgery and one pint 10 days after in an experimental treatment meant to thwart tissue rejection, Drumheller said.

Tomlin said she is a little nervous about the surgery, but is looking forward to coming out of surgery.

Drumheller said she is nervous, too, but she is ready.

“From Day One, I wanted a transplant,” she said. “Because it’s either do (dialysis) for the rest of my life or do a transplant.”