Donated kidney forever bonds former neighbors
Published: May 15, 2006
It’s tough to get a cup of sugar out of a neighbor these days, much less a kidney.
“I couldn’t believe it when Diane offered to give me one of hers,” said 74-year-old Del Jackson of Alameda, currently thriving a year after kidney transplant surgery. “How many people would do that for their neighbor? She is my angel.”
“Well, you’ve been mine,” said the aforementioned angel, Diane Gilpin, 50, as she sat with her longtime friend on Jackson’s sofa last week. They squeezed hands and smiled, both women misty-eyed about their uncommon link.
Though they were neighbors for 17 years, Gilpin’s generous act certainly went above and beyond the call of being a good neighbor. But she says it was something she felt compelled to do.
Gilpin, a piping installer for the East Bay Municipal Utility District, now lives a couple of miles away. But their rare friendship, forever deepened by this experience, now extends beyond a geographic connection.
When Diane and Scott Gilpin moved next door to Del and Robert (”Lucky”) Jackson, they became fast friends. “We even took the fence down between the two houses,” Jackson said. “We became like family.”
As the years passed, the diminutive Del began having health problems and in 2001 was put on dialysis three times a week.
“At first, they told me I was too old to get a transplant and I wasn’t a candidate,” she said. “But medicine made so much progress in that time, and last year they said I could be screened.”
Jackson was approved for the procedure, but was of course put on a lengthy waiting list for a donor. “Then an angel flew over,” she said, smiling again at Gilpin. “When I told Diane about it, she said, ‘Well Del, I’ll give you one of mine.’”
“(Del) had always been so full of life, but she started to get really tired and drained all the time after the dialysis,” Gilpin said. “They gave up their RV. She couldn’t travel anymore. When I saw all that happening, it really got to me. Plus, I just couldn’t imagine Lucky without Del, or Del without Lucky. They belong together, and I wanted to help any way I could.”
Gilpin said she would have offered her kidney even sooner, but she had been dealing with another crisis: Scott had been diagnosed with leukemia. “I knew I had to be there for my husband while he was going through that. So when he was stable after a bone marrow transplant, I said to Del, ‘Let’s go for it.’”
Gilpin was evaluated as a donor at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. She was a perfect match. Numerous tests and physicals ensued, about a six-month process, and the transplant took place on May 4, 2005.
Today both women look the picture of health. Jackson will be on anti-rejection medication for the rest of her life, but she just had a physical, “And all the numbers are good,” she said. The Jacksons are traveling again. They bought a new, smaller RV.
The Jacksons took the Gilpins out to dinner on the anniversary of the surgery. “And every year I live, Diane will get a dozen red roses from me,” Jackson said, turning to her friend. “It’s kind of hard to repay someone for something like this. All I can say is thank you, I love you and God bless you, you angel.”
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