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Builder reaches out to help transplant recipients

By BEN NELMS
bnelms@TheCitizen.com

It was a beautiful late summer day in Union City last Thursday. The bright blue sky and cumulus clouds overhead provided a perfect backdrop for the words of kidney transplant recipient Christy Cook and the presentation of $50,000 to Georgia Transplant Foundation by builder Choice Homes and a long list of vendors at a ceremony at Ravenwood at Highpoint subdivision.

“It was a collective effort by developers and the many vendors that made this possible,” said Choice Homes Area Manager Bill Robertson. “Without their help and assistance this would not have been possible.”

Choice Homes Regional Vice President Kelly Dempsey presented Georgia Transplant Foundation Executive Director David Bakelman with a $50,000 check, representing the proceeds from the sale of a new home in Deep Creek subdivision off Highpoint Road. The proceeds were generated through the combined efforts of Choice Homes, Benchmark Development and 18 vendors and subcontractors that either donated or reduced the cost of their service in developing and constructing the home.

Dempsey said his company’s aim in Atlanta was to provide more than housing. The idea, he said, is to contribute to the lives of community residents.

“As we have invested ourselves in the Atlanta region as a homebuilder, we are now investing in the Atlanta community as a whole,” Dempsey said. “We are committed not only to providing quality, affordable housing, but also to providing others with excellent quality of life.”

Bakelman acknowledged the efforts of the developer and builder and the numerous vendors that made the donation a reality. Donations such as those, he said, make a tremendous difference to those whose lives have been so dramatically altered by the need for a transplant. GTF provides financial, emotional and educational assistance to organ transplant candidates, recipients, living donors and their families and is the primary source for transplant patient assistance for all solid organ transplantation in Georgia, he said. Post-operative medical costs, he said, can run $60,000 per year for those with kidney transplants and more than $100,000 per year for heart transplant recipients.

“Waiting for and receiving an organ transplant can force your life into a whirlwind of emotions about finances, education, employment and insurance,” he said. “We are proud that we can help those Georgians that are going through this life-changing experience.”

Georgia Transplant Foundation has provided assistance for 16 individuals in Union City, 18 in Fairburn and five in Palmetto. Fulton County has 669 transplant recipients and 151 candidates for transplants.

GTF and Choice Homes vendors included Benchmark Group Management Company, Inocente Charles, Executive Landscaping, R&R Construction, Step Con Construction, Atlanta Freystone, Brand Vaughn, Contractor Services, Georgia Power, Security Solutions, Thomas Concrete, Atlanta Lanehart, Salomon Castillo, Dupree Plumbing, Metro Comfort, Solar Land and the City of Union City.

Sitting quietly in the shade of the canopy last Thursday as others spoke was a woman that knows firsthand the reality of the life-changing experience Bakelman referenced. Union City resident Christy Cook knows only too well the meaning of the assistance through efforts such as those by GTF, Choice Homes and its vendors.

It was in 1978, during her freshman year in college, that Cook discovered she had a kidney problem. She was able to get things under control but still struggled over the years with weakness and a loss of energy. Her continuous fatigue led her to quit her teaching job in 1996. She enrolled in graduate school and began working part-time. She resisted recommendations to avoid her energy-draining regimen. And for good reason.

“I was told to stop pushing myself, but I believed getting my master’s in counseling would help me find a position that wouldn’t be so physically draining,” Cook explained. “I pushed myself then so that I wouldn’t have to push myself later.”

Cook got her degree in 1999, though continuing problems with fatigue left her with no energy for a full-time job. And things were getting worse. It was in February 2000 that she discovered that she was experiencing kidney failure. And she found the reason for the kidney failure. It was something else, something that had unknowingly accompanied her for years. Yet that knowledge, while unsettling for most anyone, brought with it an answer to a persistent mystery she had known for a good portion of her life.

“I found out that I had lupus and that it caused the kidney failure. I probably had it since high school and never knew it,” she said, understanding that prolonged and extreme fatigue are some of the many manifestations of the chronic disease in which the body’s immune system attacks normal tissue. “But when I learned that I had lupus my life finally made sense. I had been sick all along and didn’t know it. I thought I had been lazy since I had so little energy.”

It was her kidney failure that put Cook on the path of discovering Georgia Transplant Foundation. Cook explained that organ failure and the need for a transplant can catapult a person into a maze of new requirements and processes. It is not as simple putting you name on a list.

With no health insurance, Cook began receiving care at Grady Hospital by way of Emory Clinic and was able to obtain disability status with the help of a local legislator. By July 2001 she was on Medicaid and began the process of evaluations that would later put her on the list as a potential transplant recipient. She had numerous tests made during the summer and fall and, due to continuing kidney problems, Cook went on peritoneal dialysis. Then, in December 2001, she received a letter from Emory saying she had been put on the transplant list.

Once on the National Transplant Waiting List, Cook and her friends began fundraising efforts. Raising funds associated with transplant-related issues and providing a financial plan is part of the evaluation process, Cook said.

“We raised $100,000 in 11 months,” she said, the smile on her face growing wider and wider. “I had hoped for a living donor. On Aug. 29, 2003 my mother, at age 68, was approved as my donor. The kidney worked great and it worked quickly. And I haven’t needed dialysis since Aug. 28, 2003. I’m so blessed for the support I got from everyone. They wouldn’t let me give up. And my mother, now she’s given me life twice.”

Though she continues to have problems associated with lupus and struggles with a lack of energy, Cook said life continues to improve. She recently began working with high school students teaching them to write novels, does substitute teaching and is working on starting her own business to teach life coaching. She wants to work with the chronically ill, helping them to live life to the fullest despite chronic pain and fatigue.

“I’m not going to waste my life. I’m beginning to thrive in 2005,” Christy Cook said with an even bigger smile.