Family matters during medical procedures

September 15,2006

By Jennifer C. Smith

Monitor Staff Writer

McAllen resident Lexi Ortega, 20, (second from left) was the recipient of a new kidney from her brother Pete Ortega, Jr., 25, (left) after going through a transplant surgery at a hospital in San Antonio. Parents Pedro and Elida Ortega stand behind.

McALLEN's Lexy Ortega looks tired.

It's 9 a.m. on a Thursday and the 20-year-old is clad in sweatpants, a gray Mickey Mouse T-shirt and her blondish-brown hair is tied back in a ponytail.

Just like every morning for the past five years, she woke up at 7 a.m. to take the medication that keeps her kidneys functioning.

It has been a long and difficult period from Ortega's first transplant at age 15 to her most recent transplant in August, and now today.

She has become closer with her parents, Elda and Pedro Sr., as well as her brother, Pedro Jr., who gave her his left kidney, but there have been emotional scars as well: fights within and outside her immediate family, as well as bouts of depression that have left traces of bitterness in her voice.

Through it all, Ortega credits her family, friends and boyfriend of two years -- at whom she smiles when he is mentioned -- for supporting her through innumerable lab tests, hospital visits and dialysis treatments.

Organ transplantation is an emotional roller coaster, various scientific studies, have found.

And the Ortega family is just one of many families across Texas undergoing the ride.

Family bonds are often strengthened -- although they are sometimes ruptured -- through traumatic events such as transplant surgeries, said Jos Igoa, a McAllen psychiatrist who specializes in psychosomatic medicine, or how the mind affects the body and vice versa.

"There is a lot of stress, a lot of disruption," said Igoa, who has evaluated patients and families for kidney transplants. "There's often depression in the person who suffers from the illness and then they go through all these series of mood swings.

"There's mixed emotions."

Sonia Garcia, community relations coordinator at the Texas Organ Sharing Alliance in McAllen, said she also sees this stress.

The not-for-profit organization, which did not arrange Ortega's transplant, is the only organization designated by the federal government to coordinate organ donations in South and Central Texas.

The Ortegas independently went through the Texas Transplant Institute of Methodist Healthcare in San Antonio.

"When families go through this experience it not only affects the individual, but everyone around them," she said. "You have to take care of this person the rest of their life."

The gentle banter among the Ortega family this Thursday morning -- Pedro Sr., a hazel-eyed construction material manager who works in Reynosa; Elda, the family's olive-skinned mother and housewife; Lexy, and her 25-year-old sibling, Pedro Jr., his long hair in a slick-backed ponytail and sporting khakis and a black T-shirt -- illustrate the tribulations the family has faced.

The other daughter, 15-year-old Elda, is at school.

Pedro tosses out jokes in Spanish, poking fun at his son for panicking before donating his left kidney to Lexy in August.

"I wasn't scared," shot back Pedro Jr. "Don't lie dad."

Lexy's medical problems began when a knee injury during cheerleading practice sent her, then a healthy freshman at McAllen Memorial High School, to the doctor.

A standard blood pressure check revealed alarmingly high blood pressure and additional tests revealed she was suffering dual renal failure because of her small kidneys, Elda said.

Doctors offered dialysis treatment while Lexy waited on a national kidney transplant list.

Elda opted for a strict diet, and weekly lab tests and weigh-ins, for her child as an alternate to the painful and exhausting prospect of kidney dialysis to filter wastes from Lexy's bloodstream.

"No salt, no Cokes," Elda said.

"Except Dr Pepper, the father teased.

Neither Lexy's parents could be kidney donors, as both have high blood pressure. But an aunt was a compatible donor and her first transplant occurred at Methodist Specialty and Transplant Institute in San Antonio on June 20, 2001.

Still, Lexy's health problems -- and family relations -- worsened.

"Every week to two weeks she was at the doctor," Elda said. "She would always have colds, sick throat or a fever."

Her aunt who gave the kidney also frequently got sick and the extended family blamed Lexy for the aunt's health woes.

Such stress is not surprising, reveals a study by researchers at the Neuropsychiatric Institute of the University of California in Los Angeles. The study was published in the June 6, 2003 issue of Pediatrics.

"Parents family and social relationships may become particularly disrupted in the months and years after a child's transplant," the study reports.

The Ortega family's life jolted again in February, when Lexy's left kidney failed and she began dialysis treatment.

"You sit there in a chair for four hours, hooked up to a machine," she said. "I would feel badly during it and worse after."

Finally, her bloodstream cleared enough for a left kidney transplant Aug. 2 from her brother.

A month after the transplant, Lexy says she feels better, but admits to depression before and after her surgeries.

"I don't think it's fair for young people to be on dialysis and not have a life," she said, adding she had to withdraw from San Antonio College of Medical & Dental Assistants because of the dialysis treatments.

A heavy dose of bitterness is no small residue.

Other consequences: no heavy lifting, no running or intense physical activity for two months and contact with a limited number of people for at least three months so her immune system is not exposed to illness.

"We take her to the mall during the weekdays, not weekends," her mother laughed.

Other effects are permanent: a daily medication regimen, frequent lab tests and doctor check-ups. There are nearly 8-inch scars on each side of Lexy's hips from her transplants.

Lexy says what she and her family have encountered is difficult.

But at least it is a Thursday, when she, her brother and father go to Reynosa to practice in the alternative rock and kumbia band, Nacidos As, which her father manages.

"And Friday to Saturday, I'm out of here, I'm with my boyfriend," she beamed.

Her father sighed. "Good for her, not for me."

Jennifer C. Smith covers health, environment and science issues at The Monitor. She can be reached at (956) 683-4462.

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This article posted October 4, 2006.