- April 18, 2024
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Palm Coast resident Beth Allen was scheduled to speak to the Parkview Baptist Church congregation about giving, and a few days before her speech, she got a call from the Mayo Clinic: Yes, the doctors said, she was a match, and could donate her kidney to her husband, Fred.
The clinic had two dates available before the end of the year: December 24 and December 25.
The Allens chose Christmas Eve, and when Beth made her speech at the church a few days after that call, her pastor, Greg Peters, made sure she mentioned her own Christmas generosity to the congregation.
The support, and the prayers, poured in, Fred Allen said.
“A lot of people have had us in our prayers. I think God is showing people about the wonderful gift of giving,” he said. “All I know is I’m extremely lucky to have a wife that’s willing to give it up. And everybody says, 'What a gift for Christmas!'”
Allen has polycystic kidney disease, a genetic disease that causes cysts to develop on the kidneys. Sufferers’ kidneys can swell to the size of a football — they should be roughly the size of a fist — and can weigh up to 30 pounds.
If the disease isn’t treated and the kidneys deteriorate, the toxins they would usually flush from the body remain inside and make a person sick. Eventually, the kidneys can fail.
Had Beth Allen not been a match, she said, Fred might have waited years to receive one, and if their situation was reversed — if she was the one with the illness — the donation wouldn’t be possible. Beth Allen is a universal donor, with an O+ blood type. Fred Allen’s blood type is A+.
She can donate to him, but not the other way around.
But in preparing for the transfer surgery, the Allens have an example: Fred Allen’s twin brother, Dan, who also has polycystic kidney disease and who received a kidney from his own wife, Julie, a few years ago.
The coincidence gets still stranger: Beth and Julie were friends — both working at the same bank — before either met their husbands. They married within five months of each other. At the time, neither knew that Fred or Dan had polycystic kidney disease.
“It’s really unusual to me that two wives were able to donate to twin brothers,” said Beth Allen, a 51-year-old senior mortgage consultant at Waterstone Mortgage. “That, to me, is like part of a bigger plan. We didn’t even know they had the kidney disease when we met.”
Watching Julie and Dan Allen go through the process, Beth Allen said, has made it easier for her.
“Because of my sister-in-law, because I know she’s fine now, that’s what I’m sticking to," she said. "Otherwise I think I’d be more scared.”
It’s also made things a bit easier for the Allens’ children — Sarah Beth, a college student at Liberty University, and Jackson, a student at Matanzas High School.
Still, the wait, and the lengthy process of preparing for the procedure, can be stressful, Beth Allen said.
“You have to have everything tested that you can think of,” Beth Allen said. “EKG, cardiogram, kidney function tests, they have to X-ray your kidneys, you have to see a psychiatrist and a social worker. Because we’re family, they want to make sure he’s not pressuring me.”
The process gives the donor plenty of chances to opt out; doctors would tell the would-be recipient that they’d discovered a compatibility problem.
The transplant surgery is tougher on the donor than the recipient, the Allens said.
Fred Allen will feel better fairly soon after surgery, because his kidney function will improve.
Beth Allen, though, will need a couple of months to regain her strength as her remaining kidney gradually enlarges to take over the function of the missing one.
But Beth Allen said she doesn’t quite understand why people call her brave for going through with it.
“One of my friends said, ‘Oh, you’re so brave to do that,’ and I thought, 'Well, how can you not do it?' I don’t think God would have put it together the way He did if it wasn’t to work out.”
