ED HJERPE (left) is especially thankful this holiday season as his brother Ed (right) gave him the lifesaving gift of a kidney in November. WARREN DILLAWAY
Published November 26, 2008 07:18 pm - The taste of mashed potatoes will make Thanksgiving special for Ed Hjerpe, who recently received the gift of life from his younger brother Tom.
Thankful to be alive Kingsville man donates kidney to older brother
By WARREN DILLAWAY - Staff Writer Star Beacon
KINGSVILLE TOWNSHIP — The taste of mashed potatoes will make Thanksgiving special for Ed Hjerpe, who recently received the gift of life from his younger brother Tom.
Ed Hjerpe, 52, will be allowed to eat small helpings of food he hasn’t tasted in months, or years, when the family sits down for Thanksgiving dinner.
The family has lived with the awareness of kidney problems invading the family’s world for more than 35 years.
“My sister and I knew that this day might come. It really wasn’t that big a surprise,” said Tom Hjerpe, 51, of Fort Worth, Texas, who was happy that his blood type and other factors made
him a potential donor for his brother.
The first touches with kidney disease came in the form of their father Ed’s struggle with a hereditary kidney disease when they were teenagers.
“It is a cyst growing on the inside and outside of the kidney,” Tom said of the kidney condition.
“What it does is choke the kidney,” Ed said of the disease that was passed on to him. “I found out at age 14,” he said.
Doctors told Ed to refrain from smoking, alcohol and caffeine, and he was able to live a normal life for decades.
“It was doing pretty well till 2000 when kidney function dropped from 60 percent to 30 percent in a year,” Ed said. He said Dr. Orlando D’Silva nurtured him through four years of careful diet and medication to keep the kidneys functioning at 30 percent.
“He helped me out so I could live a normal life,” Ed said.
As his condition deteriorated, Ed was able to complete his 30 years of employment at a General Motors plant in Parma and retired in July 2006.
In April, Ed began receiving kidney dialysis three days a week for three hours a day.
In June, Tom and his sister Becky began a process to see whether they were acceptable donors. Tom said Becky was deemed unsuitable because of a previous bout with cancer, but after extensive testing, Tom was deemed an appropriate donor.
The surgery was scheduled for Oct. 7, but a last-minute glitch postponed it until Nov. 11 so that Tom’s health history could be reviewed in greater depth.
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