Organ transplants connect families

Call it kismet, call it serendipity - whatever “it” is, the MacKinnon family has it in spades.

Theirs is a story so compelling, it captured the attention of national media. It’s a story that Janice MacKinnon has told over and over, bringing tears to her eyes every time.

She first noticed something wasn’t right with her son Jake when, at 5 years old, he would drink gallons of liquid every day. A phone call from a family doctor after a check up changed the course of their lives.

“They said, ‘Get him to the hospital and I’ll meet you there,’” she says.

Jake was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes, which proved to be an unusually aggressive case - unlike most diabetics, he was unable to feel fluctuations in his blood sugar, causing him to crash frequently. He had violent seizures, and soon he couldn’t be left alone.

“He could only be with people who knew how to treat him,” Janice remembers. After a while, the family had to check his blood sugar every two hours, even while he was sleeping.

At 18, a trusted UCSF doctor recommended that Jake consider a pancreas transplant, a relatively new procedure that, if successful, could cure Jake of the symptoms of his disease. Previously, pancreas transplants were only done in combination with a kidney transplant. After a few family discussions, Jake was put on the national transplant list, and life became a waiting game.

“They said we’d have four hours notice,” Janice says. “Every morning, I’d put a new message on the answering machine” letting the transplant team know where she could be reached that day.

The call came on Dec. 15, 2004. Janice rushed Jake to the hospital and the procedure went seamlessly. Jake healed well, and came home Dec. 22, the day before Janice’s birthday. At first, the family didn’t focus too much on the donor - it was too painful.

“I couldn’t think that someone lost someone 10 days before Christmas, it’s just too hard,” said Janice. In a way, it became a burden. “It felt like I was taking care of someone else’s loved one, too.”

That May, the MacKinnons planted a small sapling in honor of the anonymous donor. Soon after, Janice put pen to paper and wrote to the unidentified donor’s family through the transplant network.

“How do you say thank you for something like this?” she asked. Jake wrote the next letter. They got a letter back from Tish Millard, of Livingston, marking the first exchanges in what would become a decade-long friendship. They learned that Tish and Bill Millard’s son Kalem was just eight months older than Jake, when he died in an ATV accident at age 19.

Janice told the Millards about Kalem’s tree and their plans to hold an annual tree lighting to mark the anniversary of the transplant. The Millards asked if they could come, and the two families met for the first time. It was awkward and uncomfortable at times but a bond was forged that would intertwine the two families for the next decade.

Milestones like weddings and more tree lightings would be celebrated together. But over the years, Bill Millard’s health began to decline as he fought his own increasingly difficult battle with diabetes. Going blind, he was on dialysis as his kidneys began to fail. Eventually he, too, was in need of a transplant.

Without telling her family, Janice wrote to Bill and Tish, asking to be his donor. She never questioned the viability of the transplant; she instinctively knew she’d be a match. At first the couple declined, they worried that one day Jake might need that kidney. Janice insisted.

After months of testing, Janice’s instincts proved correct. She was a perfect match. Surgery took place on July 11, and Janice was back to work a month later. The hospital notified local media of the unusual arrangement, and countless news stories were done on the families. While they never got comfortable in the spotlight, they appreciated the opportunity to get the word out about organ donation. But Janice can’t stand it when people say she paid Bill back for Kalem’s life-saving gift to Jake.

“I hate that. This was so easy to do,” she laments. “Even if I never saw the person, I would still give.”

Janice is ready to move on, and setting her sights on Jake’s upcoming nuptials, set for July 11, one year after her donation.

(Contact Emily Charrier at emily.charrier@argus courier.com)