Mansfield Patient Awaits Kidney Transplant Here

              Sunday, Feb. 27, 1972 THE SHREVEPORT TIMES
Mansfield Patient Awaits Kidney Transplant Here
*.;-"
By Margaret Martin
Times Medical Writer
Willie Ree McKinney, 25, of
Mansfield is a prime candidate
for a kidney transplant.
Her mother, Annie Mae Simp-son,
44, also of Mansfield, has
already been a d m i t t e d to
Confederate Memorial Medical
Center, for a work-up! and has
been okayed to give a kidney to
her daughter.
Eventually doctors hope to
arrange a kidney transplant for
Mrs. McKinney in New Orleans.
One day they hope transplants
will be performed here.
In Renovated Rooms
But for now, Mrs. McKinney
is being kept alive in a bright
and cheerful room on the eighth
floor of Confederate Memorial
Medical Center.
Three days a week, six hours
a day, she lies flat on her back
with needles protruding from
the oversized vessels in her
forearm. (An arterialvenus fis-tula
has been surgically created
to supply a sufficient blood flow
for the hemodialysis.)
Head nurse Janet Stratton
I Henry George (top photo), a nurse's aide and a
1 member of the Renal Unit team at the Louisiana State
University Medical School in Shreveport, holds test
tube samples which have just been run through the
dialysis unit. Willie Ree McKinney (lower left), an
artificial kidney patient from Mansfield, has her blood
pressure tested by Janet Stratton, head nurse at the
unit which is l o c a t e d on the eighth floor of
Confederate Medical Center. Dr. James W. Johnson
(lower right;, head of the Nephrology Section of the
medical school, holds the plastic screening and
cellophane sausages which are the center of the
hemodialysis machine in the Renal unit. (Times Photos
by Billy Upshaw).
periodically pokes a thermome-ter
in her mouth, pumps up the
blood pressure machine, with
her eye ever toward the ma-chine
in case of trouble.
Across the room, nurse's aide
George turns buttons, or checks
the reading or readies test tubes
on the numerous machines in
his charge.
Mrs. Stratton and George and
Dr. Joe Paine, chief resident in
medicine now rotating through
the unit, are part of a team
headed by Dr. James Woodard
Johnson.
Johnson, who is a s s i s t a n t
professor of medicine and chief
of the Nephrology Section at
Louisiana State University Med-ical
School at Shreveport, came
here from New Orleans where
he was assistant professor of
medicine at the Tulane Univer-sity
School of Medicine and staff
nephrologist at the Veterans
Administration Hospital.
Cost of renovating the dark
and dank room at the hospital
including the equipment was
$200,000, according to Johnson.
The renovation included oxygen
and suction set up in the room.
Mrs. McKinney suffers from a
renal disease called poly cystic.
I t i s a h e r e d i t a r y disease,
"which only manifests itself
later in life — at age 20 or 30,"
Johnson said.
In the disease, large cysts
d e v e l o p in the kidney and
gradually get larger, "destroy-ing
the rest of the kidney
tissue."
Disease is Described
"The patient is no longer able
to excrete waste as people
normally do," he explained. "So
we treat her with an artificial
kidney (the dialysis machine)
three times a week."
The blood goes from the
patient to a monitor, which
automatically warns of kinks in
the lines, to a blood pump where
it is pumped into the dialysate
chamber.
At this point, the blood passes
t h r o u g h two cellophane
sausage-shaped tubes enmeshed
in a mass of plastic screen-like
material.
A dialysate solution contain-ing
sodium and chloride and
other components serves as a
media or balancing ingredient
through which the poison may
pass from the blood through the
cellophane.
Before being pumped back
into the body, the blood flows
through several check points
which test for air bubbles.
At the moment Mrs. Mc-
Kinney is the only patient on the
dialysis machine. She has been
on the machine since the middle
of January.
But, says Johnson, who did
postgraduate training at Har-vard
Medical School and who is
a native of Shreveport, "we
envision doing more than just
hemodialysis.
"We will take care of people
with a wide variety of kidney
problems, and which must be
managed with dietary and drug
therapy," he said.
Other machines in the labora-tory
test how well the kidney
concentrates or d i l u t e s the
urine; a centrifuge which spins
down the blood for special tests,
and a miscroscope which exam-ines
urinary sediments, "and
tells if and the kind of kidney
disease . . . . "
Renovation of the room has
been completed since August,
Johnson said, and everything is
new and adequate to provide for
patient care.
Plans for the future call for
addition of a second nurse for
the Renal Unit team.
Transplant Recipient Visitors
Stopping by to say hello to the
unit w o r k e r s was Johnny
Haynes, 27, of 4435 Bullen.
Haynes underwent a kidney
transplant in Charity Hospital,
New Orleans, last year when
Johnson was a doctor there.
Haynes' sister, Ruth Fonville,
a Denver, Colo., school teacher,
donated a kidney to her brother.
He' comes to Confederate once
a month for a check up and
reports to New Orleans once
every three months.
Getting the kidney was "pret-ty
exciting," says Haynes —
who works for himself —" and
it gave me a new lease on life
— when I got off that machine."
That's what Willie Ree Mc-
Kinney has to look forward to.
but for now, the kidney machine
on the eighth floor at Confeder-ate
looks pretty good to her.