Adam Hoover lived a healthy life until he was 32, when a spider bit his right leg.
A doctor prescribed antibiotics to treat the infection but the drugs triggered membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis, an autoimmune disease that shut down Hoover’s kidneys.
“My body swelled up after just a day or two and I felt really run down,” said Hoover, 52, who lives in Lake City. “It eventually got to the point that I needed a transplant.”
Hoover didn’t have to search far to find a donor. His wife, Zee, was a match and willing to give him one of her kidneys.
The transplant was performed in April 2007 at Sanford Hospital in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, near where the couple lived at the time before later moving to northwestern Pennsylvania.
Hoover’s new kidney lasted 18 years until he once again needed a transplant.
“My autoimmune disease had kicked in once again,” Hoover said. “My labs started going downhill, I was getting tired a lot and taking naps. Eventually, I needed dialysis.”
Unable to give him another kidney, Zee Hoover did the next best thing. She spread the word about his disease.
She appeared with her husband on an Erie television news program, and set up information tables at Dan Rice Days and the Albion Fair.
“Being a wife and a mother, I was scared to lose my husband and our children’s father,” said Zee Hoover, who has adopted two young children with Hoover and are adopting two more. “I even put a transplant sign on my car.”
Donating a kidney would fulfill Cuba woman’s dream
While the Hoovers were spreading the word about transplants, Shaina Griffin was about 110 miles east in Cuba, New York, trying to fulfill her dream of being a transplant donor.
Organ donation was important to her family, as both of her parents gave a kidney to her brother, who was born with a chronic kidney disease. He died from the disease in 2021.
“He got sick so quickly at the end that he wasn’t even able to get on the transplant list for a third kidney,” said Griffin, 28. “Organ donation hits close to home for me. … I was president of our Donate Life club in high school and I have always wanted to be a donor.”
Even though she is a mother of two young children, Griffin decided to donate a kidney when she learned a woman in her area needed a transplant.
She started the testing, then learned the woman had received a kidney from another donor. Undeterred, Griffin decided to become an altruistic donor and give it to whoever was a good match.
“I registered with UPMC Hamot and completed my testing,” Griffin said. “In October, I got a call around 4 a.m. They found a recipient.”
It was Hoover. They both arrived at Hamot on Dec. 21.
Though they wouldn’t officially meet for two more weeks, Griffin remembers seeing Hoover and his wife sitting in a hallway.
“I didn’t know it was them until I met them later,” Griffin said.
The transplant was successful, though Griffin did suffer minor complications and remained at Hamot for a week.
Hoover continues to recover but said he is feeling great. He has started to put on some of the 20 pounds he lost during his most recent illness.
“My whole goal is to live to see my children get old enough to graduate high school, get married and just become adults,” said Hoover, whose children range in age from 17 months to 9 years.
Meeting family was almost ‘blackout blur’ to kidney donor
Hoover and Griffin met in a conference room at a medical office across the street from Hamot. Hoover brought his family.
“It was almost a blackout blur,” Griffin said. “I just looked at him and I didn’t even say anything, just gave him a hug.”
“I was just so nervous and thankful,” Hoover said.
Hoover eventually might need a third transplant
Hoover knows the transplant doesn’t cure his disease and that it has about a 30% chance of returning.
He might need a third transplant sometime in the future, though he doesn’t know where the organ would go. Surgeons don’t remove the old kidneys during surgery, though the unused kidneys eventually shrink to the size of quarters.
“I don’t know where they would put them,” Hoover said as he raised his shirt to display his two transplant incisions. “I’m running out of belly.”
Contact David Bruce at dbruce@timesnews.com. Follow him on X @ETNBruce.
This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Cuba woman donates kidney, gives recipient a third lease on life
Reporting by David Bruce, Erie Times-News / Erie Times-News
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