Day Arrives for Wife-to-Husband Kidney Transplant : Medicine: Delayed once, the rare surgery for newlywed Orange County couple is scheduled today in San Diego. The case has received nationwide publicity.

Despite a long list of potential complications, an Orange County couple said Tuesday they are eagerly awaiting their rare wife-to-husband kidney transplant today, an operation initiated weeks ago--then delayed--amid nationwide scrutiny.

“I’m a lot healthier, totally relaxed and anxious to get this over with,” said Victoria Ingram-Curlee, 45, a Mission Viejo real estate agent who hopes to join 350 other Americans who have donated a kidney to a spouse.

“It’s exciting,” she said at a news conference at Sharp Memorial Hospital, where the surgery is scheduled for mid-afternoon. “Everything before seemed like such a haze. There was so much activity, too many things going on. But now we’re ready for it, body, mind and soul.”

“I’m ready too,” said Randall Curlee, 46, a marketing representative for a Costa Mesa audio company, whose diabetes has left him with heart problems, vision difficulties and severely impaired kidneys. Curlee needs the transplant immediately or he will require dialysis.

After a nationally televised wedding at the hospital, the newlyweds suffered a serious setback Oct. 12, when a physician nicked one of three arteries leading to the lower part of Ingram-Curlee’s left kidney during a routine preoperative procedure called an arteriogram.

It postponed and even threatened a transplant that had taken on a fairy tale quality. The wedding was televised on “Good Morning, America” and the “Today” show the day before the first scheduled surgery.

Despite the mishap, and the fact that the vessel nicked during the procedure has not completely healed, doctors said Tuesday they believe Ingram-Curlee’s left kidney is suitable for donation. They intend to transplant it, rather than her right one, as originally intended, so that Ingram-Curlee will be left with the better of the two organs.

Dr. Robert Mendez, chairman of the multi-organ transplant team at Sharp Memorial, said that Ingram-Curlee had healed well enough to endure the operation--which is far more extensive than the one Curlee will undergo--and that her left kidney should perform superbly, especially when compared with Curlee’s failing kidneys.

“The kidney itself is just fine,” Mendez said. “It’s alive and vigorous and receiving a good blood supply. Yes, there has been some compromise to it. But we’ve decided to utilize that kidney and remove the area of compromise by repairing it on the bench,” a phase of the surgery slated to be completed by Dr. Arturo Martinez.

“There’s absolutely no damage to the kidney,” Martinez said. “It’s only that small section of artery that’s affected.”

The two doctors said Ingram-Curlee currently receives about 53% of the total effectiveness of her kidneys from her right kidney, making the left one more suitable for removal.

There remains an 8% to 10% chance that Curlee will reject the organ during the first year after the transplant, but, Mendez said, there was only a 10% chance that his wife would be the almost perfect donor she turned out to be. Her kidneys were an ideal match to her husband’s in the two most important factors.

Long odds have been only part of the couple’s story. Under any circumstances, it’s been an unusual year for the pair, who said the attention and adulation in recent weeks has exceeded their wildest expectations--which isn’t to say it’s been welcome.

Privacy has come at a premium, they say, with fear an ever-present nemesis.

Curlee admitted feeling anxious, even fatalistic at times, about surgery that poses greater complications for his wife than for him. Ingram-Curlee’s operation will involve a 12-inch incision and the removal of a portion of her lower rib to take out the kidney.

“His reaction made me angry,” Ingram-Curlee said in an interview this weekend, “because he had brought up a negative issue. He said, ‘Something could happen, one of us might not make it.’

“Well, that irritated me, because above all, I’m a positive person. I just won’t accept that kind of thinking, like I wouldn’t accept the doctors saying I might not be able to donate after the injury to my kidney.”

At the time, the mishap cast doubt over Ingram-Curlee being used as a donor.

Ingram-Curlee now says the delay was a “godsend,” because the couple had just moved into a new house in Mission Viejo and had no place to sleep. But, she said, the medical team’s “negativity” also made her angry.

“I was very upset with the doctors then, too. I told them, ‘I’m getting sick and tired of the negative responses here. To me, that’s just not acceptable,’ ” she said.

But tests two days later revealed that Ingram-Curlee’s left kidney had sustained no lasting damage.

His wife’s optimism, Curlee said, “has changed attitudes even in the hospital. Before, the doctors were so cautious, trying first to present the negative side of things. Now, they’re telling her and me both we’re right to be optimistic. Really, Victoria has won over everybody.”

Her hopes for the surgery?

“A better quality of life,” she said. “And after all, he is my very best friend. Wouldn’t you want to have your best friend in the best health possible?”