Patient Success Stories 

Transplantation is a life-changing experience. Just ask any patient who has received one. Three of our transplant patients share their stories.

Living Donor Helps Co-Worker

Carrie Gaul, of Clarksville, Ohio, had occasionally thought that she would be willing to be an organ donor - someday. She was listed as a potential donor on her driver's license, but hadn't given the matter much more thought, until she learned that family friend and coworker Gary Barr needed a kidney transplant.

Barr had been experiencing symptoms including tightness in his chest, ashen skin and back pain. He was diagnosed with Light Chain Deposition Disease. His body was producing an excess of elements known as light chains, which build up in organ tissue. In Barr's case, the deposits were causing kidney failure. He began dialysis and learned that he would require a kidney transplant.

Barr visited leading institutions in both Cincinnati and Cleveland, and, at his son's urging, OSU Medical Center in Columbus. There, he knew he had found the right place. "I was impressed by the technology and the expertise I encountered," he says. 

He was not alone in his choice. "Eighty percent of transplants are done in academic centers because the surgeries require an organized multidisciplinary approach," says Ronald Ferguson, MD, PhD, the surgeon who performed Barr's transplant.

Having found the right place, Barr needed to find the right donor. Although thousands of Americans have to wait on transplant lists until an organ becomes available, Barr was fortunate to have several family members and friends who wanted to help. Perhaps none was more determined than Carrie Gaul. When she learned of Barr's condition, she says, she thought about it for a short time, and then "I called Gary and told him I really wanted to do this for him."

The necessary tests were run to determine if they were a good match. The donation and transplant surgeries were performed at OSU in June 2005, and both Gaul and Barr have recovered well. Since the donation, Gaul says, "I walk taller every day. It's like nothing you can ever compare, knowing that you helped save someone's life."
To order the brochure Why You Should be an Organ and Tissue Donor, call 1-800-293-5123 or click here.

Twenty Years Later, Bone Marrow Transplant Recipient Grateful for Transplant

Kevin Hempfling says that when he received his bone marrow transplant at the age of 18, he didn’t know how lucky he was.

Twenty years later, looking at his three children, he now understands.

Basketball injuries and the sharp attention of his sister, a nurse, revealed Hempfling’s leukemia in March of his senior year of high school. Luckily, the condition was caught relatively early.

The Ottawa, Ohio, native was referred to the OSU James Cancer Hospitals’ fledgling BMT program, becoming its third ever BMT patient in 1984. At that time, only siblings could be marrow donors. That was Hempfling’s second lucky strike -- neither his brother Keith nor sister Bonnie were matches, but his brother Mark was.

After a grueling round of chemo, months spent in the hospital and then in an apartment rented by the family for Hempfling and his mother, he was able to return home temporarily for his high school graduation.

Finally, after surviving a pneumonia scare (his third bit of luck), Hempfling was given a clean bill of health in 1987, three years after his transplant.

Hempfling’s fourth miracle came for him and his wife, Julie, more than a decade later in the form of their three children, Katilyn, Brandon and Collin. He had been told that because of the chemotherapy he had had to undergo as a part of the transplant, he probably would not be able to have children.

Hempfling, now a salesman at a farm equipment manufacturing firm in Ottawa, still lives on his family’s farm near his siblings and parents. He coaches all three of his kids in basketball, soccer, baseball and softball.

“Mark, my older brother, and I weren’t as close when we were younger. Funny how things work out, that he was the match. It drew us all so much closer, but Mark and me especially,” says Hempfling.

Hempfling had a chance to reflect on all those lucky chances, and his successful treatment, in 2004 at the twentieth birthday celebration of the Bone Marrow Transplant Center at the OSU James Cancer Hospital.

“I’m thankful for more than I would have been. I just don’t take things for granted any more,” says Hempfling.