The Transplanted Kidney

Mrs. Howard Tucker, 45, had not felt so well in years. Member of a family in which mother, sister and an uncle had died from polycystic kidneys,* she herself was the first patient to receive healthy kidney transplanted from the body of another woman who had just died (TIME, July 3). Nearing the anniversary of her landmark operation, Rut Tucker had gained 20 Ibs., was doing her own housework, even to washing & ironing, and going out evenings, full of pe. Then the blow fell.

Kidney specialists, gathered in Chicago fortnight ago for the American Urological Association's annual meeting, were impatient to hear about the transplant progress. They could not hear from Surgeon Richard H. Lawler, who performs the operation, because he was in Europe and anyway they wanted the views of one of their own members. Dr. Patrick H. McNulty had been consulting urologist on the case, and he was persuaded to report

Hazelnut Size. Said McNulty: the operation was a failure. The grafted kidney was not functioning and never had. It had shrunk, he said, to the size of a hazelnut. The reason, Dr. McNulty said, was that the donor's tissues were incompatible with Mrs. Tucker's. His statements were given to reporters, and one of them phoned Mrs. Tucker.

Says Mrs. Tucker: "If I had a weak heart, this shocking news would have killed me. What a way to get your death sentence--from a newspaper reporter! But Mrs. Tucker refused to take the word as a death sentence. "The doctors have always told me everything because they know I can take bad news," she said. "Why would they build me up to this letdown?"

More Mad Than Anything. The last time Surgeon Lawler checked on the transplanted kidney was April 1, when he performed a follow-up operation to widen the ureter where it was being narrowed by scar tissue. He told Mrs. Tucker then that he was well satisfied with it, hoped that it would work so well that her own remaining kidney, which is also diseased, could be removed later. Back from Europe, where he heard about three human kidney transplants, made since his operation, Surgeon Lawler was keeping his mouth shut last week. He was expecting to publish his own report in the A.M.A. Journal.

But Mrs. Tucker felt perfectly free to talk. The grafted kidney was placed where she can feel it, she said. "It's still there, it hasn't floated, and if it's only the size of a hazelnut, it's the biggest hazelnut that ever grew." Added Mrs. Tucker: "While I do have butterflies in my stomach about it, I'm more mad than anything."

*An incurable disease in which cysts destroy the working tissues of the kidneys.

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