‘Our mommy needs a kidney!’: KO grad answers call on behalf of Mon City woman
From the mouths of babes – or in this case, the signs they hold on a YouTube video – comes hope for Diana Zippay.
“Social media, I’ve always said, is only as good as the person who uses it,” the Monongahela resident affirmed. “And if you use it for good, good things can come from it.”
A couple of months ago, her children, Bailey and Tobias, went online with the signs bearing the message: “Our mommy needs a kidney!” The video went viral, bringing national attention to the plight of Diana, who suffers from an organ-damaging genetic condition called Alport syndrome.
Thanks to a donor from relatively close to home, the youngsters’ plea has been answered.
Melissa Deighan, a Keystone Oaks High School graduate who lives in Baldwin Borough, actually is a friend of the Zippay family: Madison Neugebauer, her niece, dates Anthony Williams, Diana’s nephew.
When Deighan heard Anthony talk about his Aunt Di, she considered helping but learned her blood type wasn’t a match with Zippay.
“I didn’t realize how sick she was at the time,” Deighan said. “Then her children made the video, and that kind of told me: A, she hasn’t made any progress thus far, and B, I could not stand the thought of those little kids having to live the rest of their lives without their mom.”
So she offered to participate in what’s known as paired donation, through which her kidney will go to a recipient with whom she’s compatible, while Zippay benefits from a separate donor.
“You have a partner who’s willing to offer up an organ in order for you to get an organ,” Zippay explained. “That’s pivotal, because finding a match is very difficult. Numbers and numbers of people were tested on my behalf who did not meet the criteria for a match.”
Surgery for her and Deighan is scheduled for July 25 at Allegheny General Hospital, where Dr. Lorenzo Machado is part of the transplant team.
“Usually, when the pairs are not compatible, they are asked if they would participate in some kind of paired exchange,” he said. “We can do them between pairs within our own center, but there are several national programs. The one we participate in is the National Kidney Registry.”
Through the registry, Zippay was matched with a donor in Philadelphia, and Deighan with a recipient in Washington, D.C. That patient, in turn, has a paired donor whose kidney is going to someone in need in North Carolina.
Such situations are not uncommon.
“Most of the time, it ends up being a chain,” Machado said. “In that way, multiple people around the country benefit from someone like Melissa stepping forward. We’re able to transplant not just one person, but several.”
Deighan actually had considered donating previously. Along with her sister and brother-in-law, Kelly and Tom Neugebauer, she was tested on behalf of a friend who needed a kidney, and Kelly turned out to be the best match.
The resulting transplant turned out to be a success.
“From a recipient and a donor standpoint, I see them both almost weekly, and I know that everyone is healthy,” Deighan said. “I know it can work.”
So do her parents, John and Diana Deighan.
“They have two daughters, and both of them are giving donations,” she said. “For them, it has to be scary, but they’ve given us nothing but unwavering support.”
That’s what Diana Zippay and her husband, Jason, a physics and chemistry teacher at Peters Township High School, have encountered. She said that while in the hospital waiting room recently, they saw the mother of one of Jason’s students, who told them:
“I just wanted to let you know that I was supposed to get tested for you, but they told me you had a donor. I still agreed to be an altruistic donor for someone who may need a kidney.”
“At that moment,” Diana said, “the purpose of the video came full circle. That’s what we wanted. We wanted people to say, ‘I can do this. I can save somebody’s life and still lead a normal life, myself.'”
For information about the Allegheny Health Network Living Donor Kidney Program, visit www.ahn.org/specialties/transplant-institute/living-donor-kidney-program or call 412-359-4441.