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JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — Jennifer Tamol was plenty nervous the evening before she went to the hospital to donate one of her kidneys to a complete stranger, someone in Minnesota who was awaiting his or her chance for a new, better life.
The operation, though, was not what worried Tamol: It was the prospect of playing her cello in St. John's Cathedral downtown with the Civic Orchestra of Jacksonville. It's a new volunteer group, and this was its first public performance.
She needn't have worried. "The Light Cavalry Overture" got the orchestra off to a rousing start, and it did just fine on short pieces by Bizet and Beethoven.
As people left the church pews to congratulate the musicians, her husband, Jim Tamol, stood up. "She was nervous about this," he said. "Now this is over, she can start to worry about that."
"That," of course, being the kidney donation.
On May 23, the day after the concert, she would check into Mayo Clinic Florida to prepare for an operation at 4:30 the next morning. Shortly after that, her left kidney would be packed in ice inside an Igloo cooler and taken by courier to Jacksonville International Airport, headed on a commercial flight toward the Mayo complex in Rochester, Minn.
It'll be six months before she can find out who will be living with her kidney, provided the recipient wants to be known. She thinks it would be nice to know. All she's been told is that it's someone who's still quite young.
A friend, Celeste DeVaney, had traveled from Alabama to help Tamol recuperate. After the concert, she pronounced herself wowed at Tamol's act. But don't expect the same from her.
"I wouldn't do it," she said. "I would do it for a family member, but a stranger? I'm not sure I have that conviction. I'm just not that philanthropic."
Jim Tamol said that's just Jennifer. "She's always wanted to do something big and grandiose," he said. "She always wanted to make a difference."
He said he backed her fully in her decision, but admitted he was getting nervous. "It's an operation. I know they do this all the time. But it's scary."
Tamol, though, was more than ready. She said she wasn't worried. No second thoughts. She couldn't wait to get started.
Within minutes of the concert's end, musicians and the audience were packing a reception room. There was champagne and snacks. She passed: She had to be in the hospital the next morning.
But she smiled, there in the bustling group of well-wishers, and tapped her side: "I'm giving my kidney a send-off".
Tamol is 37, a self-described nerd — "Star Wars" and "Star Trek: The Next Generation" souvenirs decorate the desk at the nonprofit where she works — who is consistently self-effacing.
People tell her she's brave.
"But I don't know. I don't accept compliments well, so if I get a compliment, my reaction is to ... "
Deflect?
"Yeah," she said, laughing at herself.
Kidney donations are interesting and important, she agreed. But she just doesn't think she's very interesting at all.
Martin Mai, a nephrologist who's chairman of the division of transplant medicine at Mayo Clinic, disagreed.
Tamol, he said, is known as a "non-directed altruistic donor." They're also often called Good Samaritans: people who volunteer one of their kidneys to someone they don't know, for the simple reason of helping a stranger. Fewer than 1 in 10 kidney donors at Mayo fit into that category, he said.
Others donate to try to help a family member or a friend, though it's often difficult to find an exact match. Even so, they'll often agree to donate to another person, with their loved one remaining on a list of those waiting for a compatible kidney.
That's where the altruistic donor comes in. By donating their kidney to whomever needs it, they can start off a chain reaction that goes far beyond the original recipient.
Tamol kicked off one of those chains, one that stretched to nine people and to Mayo locations in Jacksonville, Rochester and Phoenix. So she didn't help just one person. Her decision affected nine people, Mai said.
"I hope she gets the joy of hearing from some of those recipient families, the huge chain that she made in their lives. It doesn't start without her," he said.
Kidneys from living donors last longer than those from cadavers, he said, and while there are risks to the donor, those risks are small. And a transplant offers, on average, a life that's two to three times longer than that of someone who is reliant on grueling dialysis treatments to do the work of their failing kidneys.
Non-directed altruistic donors such as Tamol grew 27 percent over the past four years to 209 in 2015, according to the nonprofit United Network for Organ Sharing. Even so, they're still rare, making up just 4 percent of all living kidney transplants last year.
"There's no doubt," Mai said. "Jennifer's a hero."
Told that later, Tamol looked almost pained at the praise.
"This is so weird," she said.
She might have overestimated herself, she said. She anticipated bouncing quickly back from the surgery — for which she took vacation time — but it was tougher than she thought. She went to work after a week, but mostly just for half days. She got sore, and tired.
On a Thursday, two weeks and two days after the surgery, she had something of a victory: She drove herself to work for the first time.
Tamol says she can't fully explain why she was motivated to do what she did.
"Half the people think I'm completely crazy," she said. "They may be right."
She had read accounts from people who had anonymously donated their kidneys, and something about it resonated with her. Many said it felt like a calling. Could be, she said.
It may, though, be as simple as this: "I mean obviously I like being able to help somebody. I have something that I don't strictly need, so to give somebody their life back ... "
She decided four years ago to donate a kidney, and reached out to Mayo Clinic. She took a week's worth of vacation then to go through a battery of tests, and was tested periodically after that. There were a couple of false alarms where she thought there was a suitable recipient, though something went awry each time.
But she stayed on the list of donors. She really wanted, she said, to do this.
Even so, Mayo staff quizzed her at every step, making sure she wanted to proceed. Basically, she said, people tried to talk her out of it. That's a crucial part of the process, Mai said: Medical centers have to be sure of the donors' motivations.
Finally, this May, a perfect match for her kidney was found, and her long wait ended.
Jim Tamol said Jennifer has always been idealistic. She went into teaching and loved it, he said, but left for the reason so many do — red tape that got in the way.
After that she worked for the United Way, and then went to Lutheran Social Services, which helps the needy in Jacksonville. She's advancement manager there, writing grants and managing donor lists.
That's the culture she grew up in, she said. She looks to the example of her father, Stephen Barrett, who spent his working life at nonprofit agencies helping the blind and deaf, moving often — even as far Alaska — wherever there was a need.
That mission was cut short when he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. He was sick for four years until he died in 2010. He was 60.
His death, she figures, certainly played into her decision.
"It's not like he was in the same situation. It's not like I was praying for someone to give my dad an organ that could save his life. But if there had been a fix like that for him, I would have done anything I could. So I feel like maybe if I can give someone else their family member back — I feel like, because of that, it has something to do with my dad.
"See?" she said. "I cannot express myself well."
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Information from: The (Jacksonville) Florida Times-Union, http://www.jacksonville.com
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