Transplant Couple Making A Game Of Survival

They're Training For Athletics

By Shari Rudavsky

Vivian and Jose Alvarez hop on the treadmill three to five nights a week for an intense workout to burn up more than calories.

The Coral Springs couple want to show the world that organ recipients like them can live normal, healthy lives.

June 21-24, the Alvarezes, both 41, will join about 2,000 other organ recipients from around the country and 144 from Florida at the National Kidney Foundation's U.S. Transplant Games in Orlando.

The games are about more than competition -- they're a way to get the word out about the need for organ donations.

More than 68,000 Americans are awaiting organ transplants. Each day, 12 people die while waiting, according to the National Kidney Foundation.

``For me, it has nothing to do with winning,'' said Vivian, who works as a medical assistant in the Margate and Tamarac offices where Jose practices family medicine. ``It's really necessary to create awareness. We're so blessed with health. We would love to be able to tell people.''

One family in the stands will already know what an organ transplant can do. This Nebraska family donated their loved one's organs after an aneurysm left her brain-dead. Her pancreas and kidney now reside in Jose's body.

Jose will meet them for the first time at this year's games, an encounter that he's anticipating as eagerly as the games. These organs are his second set.

In 1991, after suffering from diabetes since childhood, he had his first kidney-pancreas transplant at the University of Miami, one of its first patients to receive the double-organ transplant.

His body rejected the organs six months later, and he returned to the dialysis that had kept him alive before the operation.

After his body regrouped, he put himself on several waiting lists.

Eventually, his name came to the top at the University of Minnesota, where he underwent the second operation in 1996, a procedure that eventually proved successful.

Vivian, whose kidneys started to fail when she was 18 and developed an autoimmune disease, has lived with her sister's kidney since 1985. Vivian and Jose met in November 1997 through a mutual friend who worked as a nurse at the University of Miami center where they both go every two months to see if their transplanted organs are functioning properly.

On their first date, something clicked. Jose found himself regularly making the three-hour trip from his home in Fort Pierce to see Vivian in Coral Gables. Both come from Cuban-American families, both work in healthcare, and both maintain a strong belief in God.

Copyright © 2000 Miami Herald.