Kidney Transplant Builds Bond With Massachusetts Fire Fighters

October 17, 2006 - Wherever Randy Stein goes, Mike Sawicki is with him. Sawicki, who donated a kidney to his fellow fire fighter at Pittsfield, MA Local 2647, is helping Stein overcome a life-threatening condition. In fact, Sawicki’s offer may have saved Stein’s life.

Stein, 40, was diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease four years ago when he contracted an unrelated illness. He in the hospital when Sawicki made the unexpected offer to donate one of his own kidneys.

“You don’t know what to say to someone who does that for you,” says Stein, a fire inspector who has worked for the Pittsfield Fire Department for 11 years.

As his condition worsened, Stein coped with the kidney disease by undergoing dialysis to treat the symptoms. The dialysis began in February 2006, but the transfusions were only a short-term measure, and Stein knew a transplant was the only solution. He was placed on the state-wide list in Massachusetts for organ recipients. Then he waited.

No member of his family met the medical criteria to be a donor, so his options were dwindling. “I was beginning to think that the kidney was going to come from a cadaver,” he says. But organs from living donors are preferred because they tend to last longer.

His mother, Beverly Stein, wrote a letter urging fellow fire fighters to be tested to determine if they were a medical match for her son, then posted the letter in Pittsfield’s four firehouses and at its headquarters. The letter was also distributed at a state meeting of the Professional Fire Fighters of Massachusetts.

The letter didn’t produce an immediate response, but in February, while Stein was hospitalized with an infection, his colleagues quickly understood the urgency of his condition.

Sawicki, 47, and another Local 2647 fire fighter, were tested to determine if they were suitable organ donors.

“This is something we both wanted to do. We take care of each other,” Sawicki says. Both were a match based on blood and tissue tests.

Sawicki took his son to the hospital while Stein was, and he stopped by his friend’s room and dropped a bombshell: “He walked in and said, ‘I’ve got you taken care of, don’t worry about it.’ I was blown away,” Stein recalls.

In April Sawicki and the other potential donor met privately at Engine 1 in Pittsfield and flipped a coin to determine who would donate a kidney. “We flipped a coin because we couldn’t think of any other way to decide,” Sawicki says.

A fire fighter in Pittsfield for 19 years, Sawicki says he had no hesitation donating his kidney, but there was one hurdle. “I had to tell my wife,” he says.

But on June 14, Sawicki and his wife drove to Baystate Health in Springfield, Massachusetts, for the delicate procedure. Surgery to harvest Sawicki’s kidney began at 7:00 a.m. One hour later – in an operating room adjacent to the one Sawicki occupied – another surgeon replaced Stein’s only remaining kidney (the other had been removed two months earlier) with Sawicki’s organ.

“I consider myself as good as new,” Stein says, who returned to work in August. Sawicki returned in September.

Stein and Sawicki see each other occasionally. Stein works at headquarters and Sawicki is in one of the city’s four firehouses, but they stay in contact. “Of course when I see him now, it’s a little different. It’s a weird feeling,” Stein says.

But they still joke about the experience. “The other day, I saw him and said, you can’t have it back. There’s a no return policy,” Stein says.