Three siblings donate kidneys to help brother

Three siblings who, over a 29-year span, have sustained the life of their brother by donating a kidney to him say the season of Thanksgiving appears especially bright this year.

Thomas McManus, 53, will be home for the holiday after a kidney transplant last week that imbued his physicians with a sense of awe – and not because of the surgery. It was a routine kidney transplant – if such surgeries can be called routine.

Doctors pride themselves on advancements in kidney transplants these days, an operation that has become technically sophisticated and minimally invasive. But in this case, the donor organ came from a sister who was the third sibling to offer a kidney when the one he had failed.

“We call him Mr. Lucky,” Mary Suzanne McManus of Islip, N.Y., said Friday, as the family of siblings gathered in Thomas McManus’ hospital room at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan. “He’s really a very lucky person.”

And some might even say blessed.

Thomas McManus has had a long and debilitating history of kidney problems and was only 24 in 1977 when evidence of a congenital kidney disorder first arose: He was losing vigor and symptoms of gout, a painful inflammatory condition, were encumbering day-to-day routines.

Such telltale symptoms were worrisome to McManus’ father, a pediatrician, who recommended that his son see a specialist.

The diagnosis was congenital hypoplastic renal disease, a disorder his physician, Dr. Sandip Kapur, said is typified by small, ineffective kidneys.

On the cusp of all of youth’s promises, McManus was stunned to find he would need a transplant. His brother, John, who now lives in Sayville, N.Y., said there was no question that the McManus family would step up to the plate. All five siblings were tested.

“Basically, it was between me and my sister Siobhan; it was pretty much a coin toss,” John McManus said of the tissue typing that revealed who was closest genetically to Thomas. “The doctor told me at the time that Siobhan’s risk was slightly higher, especially if she became pregnant later on. So to alleviate that problem, I volunteered.”

But for some reason, John’s kidney failed within a week, which again put Thomas in need of a kidney.

“Then my sister Siobhan said she would donate her kidney, and that one lasted about 30 years,” Thomas McManus said Friday.

Siobhan McManus, of West Palm Beach Shores, Fla., said she didn’t think twice about organ donation: “I was 20 years old. I guess I was thinking he could live or die and he was pretty sick at that time, and he already rejected my brother John’s kidney and was on dialysis.”

At the time, kidney operations for both the donor and recipient were invasive and debilitating. Doctors had to remove a rib to reach either of the twin purplish organs that filter toxins from the bloodstream.

“This one,” McManus said of the organ he received last week from Mary Suzanne, “seems to be working out OK so far.”

Dr. John Wang of the Roginsen Transplant Center in Manhattan, an affiliate of NewYork-Presbyterian, said the organ will likely work well for decades to come. “This is an excellent match,” he said.

Kapur added that in recent years, researchers have fine-tuned the art and science behind preventing organ rejection.

“We have more drugs to choose from,” he said, noting that doses are dramatically lower than in the past, putting less toxic pressure on the transplanted organ.

Thomas McManus, who lives in Islip with his sisters, Mary Suzanne and Patricia, said he is looking forward to Thanksgiving.

“I think it will be a great holiday,” he said.

Siobhan was more reflective: “We don’t get together that often, so this is very nice. Our parents, who’ve both passed on, would be really, really proud.”