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Kidney-Shaped Valentine's Gift

ATLANTIC CITY – As reported by the Press of Atlantic City: "This Valentines Day, many people pledge their love with gifts shaped like hearts.

Not so for one Pleasantville family. For them, love looks a lot like a kidney.

Because if it wasn't for the affection between Darlin and Efrain Contreras, Efrain might never have gotten the transplant he needed.

Efrain, 56, pulled up his black shirt to show off his scar.

It starts at the waistband of his black sweatpants. It sidles diagonally up the front of his right side, cutting a purple swath across his abdomen. It is about an inch wide, and a footlong light brown at the edge. It is about a foot long.

Without Darlin's kidney, the degenerative disease he inherited from his mother that was slowly destroying his kidneys may well have killed him.

The two met when they worked together at Trump Taj Mahal. She was a slot attendant and he was a security guard.

The Dominican Republic man was immediately attracted to the red-haired Cumberland County woman.

"He was hitting on me from the beginning," Darlin, 39, recalled with a laugh. She turned him down, but he kept up. "He said, 'oh, whenever you're ready I'll be waiting.'"

She finally relented.

She was flattered by the close attention on their first date at Chi-Chis in summer 1998. "Down to pulling out a chair," she said. "He was focused directly on me."

Shortly afterwards, the trouble started.

"I felt very bad," he said. "I'd walk one block and I would be exhausted." He saw a doctor. It was his kidneys.

For most people, kidneys are fist-sized organ about midway between a person's belt and rib cage. The complicated organs strain impurities from the blood.

But some, like Efrain, suffer from the genetically inherited Polycystic Kidney Disease.

For them, the kidneys are home to fluid-filled growths. Over years, the growths gradually displace the kidneys, slowly limiting function. For most people who suffer during their 30s and 40s.

About 500,000 people in this country have it, according to the National Institutes of Health and it's the fourth-most common reason kidneys fail.

Over the next several years, Efrain watched what he ate, minimized what he drank and hoped for a transplant. They continued to date.

Their romance blossomed while his kidneys failed. They married May 17, 2003 and he started dialysis June 26.

Efrain, who was married before, was in love. "I needed someone like you," he said as he sat next to her Friday. "I didn't think I would ever find someone like you." His eyes glistened.

For the next 2 1/2 years, they followed the schedule. Three times a week for five hours they sat together as a machine strained the impurities from his blood. An artificial vein was installed under his left forearm to handle the strain.

In the meantime, he waited for a donor kidney.

Then the thought occurred to her. She had two healthy kidneys. Why couldn't she give him one of hers?

Doctors initially dismissed it, but when she insisted they test her they found the couple shared the O+ blood type. It was a match. She could do it.

But she first had to lose some weight, doctors said. She stood 5 foot 1 inch, weighed 285 pounds and doctors refused to operate until she shed some of it.

She joined Weight Watchers and started exercising. The pounds started coming off. He was waiting for her. When she lost enough weight, he could have a kidney.

"It was stressful on me," she said. "I had all the pressure."

She even gained weight some weeks. "I thought 'this was a week wasted. I could have gotten this done a week sooner.'"

While time passed, Efrain grew weaker. His face darkened in places, lightened in others, a side-effect from the dialysis and his failing kidneys. He stayed home.

He carefully watched what he ate, steering away from favorite foods and limiting his water.

Finally, she lost enough weight. Doctors scheduled them both for surgery Jan. 10. Doctors would remove one of her kidneys. They would then open the front of Efrain's abdomen, attach the kidney inside and sew him shut. He would have three kidneys, and over the years the two failing ones would shrivel up and die.

On the night before the operation, they couldn't sleep. Instead, they tidied their Pleasantville bungalow because they knew family and friends would soon be over.

She was home two days later, and he eight.

Friends decorated their home. A month later, most of the decorations are down, but a silver banner still hangs over their head and reads "Welcome Home!" Two slowly deflating balloons are in the back.

A month later, he is vastly improved. He is taking 34 pills to stave off infection and rejection. That will decrease gradually as the risk lessens over the next few months. He also has to wear surgical masks to cut down the risk of infection.

He has his strength back. He can eat and drink what he wants. Her kidney fixed everything.

Doctors told Darlin to take it easy over the next couple months as her lone kidney grew to handle the increased demand. But she should otherwise be fine.

"I just feel God brought us together for this," she said. "Here, we are, the same blood type, everything.

"I feel it was God's calling," she continued. "You know what I mean. How often does this happen? I mean, he's from the Dominican Republic, and I'm from here. Its God's calling," she said.

"It's true love."

copyrighted material written for and appeared exclusively in The Press of Atlantic City

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