Flashback 2006: Tokyo Rose, all over again

     My cousin Harry Roberts died of complications from kidney failure last week. You might remember me writing about his struggles. I will certainly be remembering him in the future — it's too soon now — but his loss got me thinking of what I've written about the illness over the years, and I found this. It ran back when the column filled a page, and I've kept the original headings, and the closing joke. Vasilios Gaitanos received a kidney transplant from his wife in 2007 and lived to 2021.

     The opening section refers to arrests that were being made of Muslim immigrants somehow implicated in the 9/11 plot and shipped to Guantanamo Bay, tortured, and kept there for years, often without any formal criminal charges, a dynamic we're repeating today.

OPENING SHOT

     Mastering the details is what makes you feel at home in a new place. When I moved to East Lake View, it was a sign I was settling in to learn that those distant pops heard Sunday mornings were the Lincoln Park Gun Club blasting away at clay pigeons. Or that the guy walking the black lab was William Kennedy Smith.

     Or that the little old lady running the Japanese general store on Belmont Avenue was Iva Toguri D'Aquino, the notorious Tokyo Rose, whose broadcasts from Japan during World War II were intended to undermine U.S. troop morale.
     A slight thrill to know that the woman selling you rice crackers was convicted as a traitor and served time in prison.
     That she was really innocent was a deeper secret — I didn't know; I bet most Chicagoans didn't know, not until they read her obituary last week. She was swept up in circumstances, trapped in Japan when the war broke out — an American citizen, born on the Fourth of July, surviving the war by working at a radio station. There was no one "Tokyo Rose," but a string of female broadcasters, and nobody proved that D'Aquino was one of them. But she was convicted anyway during the security hysteria of the late 1940s and sent to prison for six years.
     Six years.
     Her story would be trivia if it did not echo today. If there were not thousands of new Iva Toguri D'Aquinos rotting in prisons because they, too, were swept up by circumstances at a time, like the postwar period, when fear overwhelms our devotion to our most cherished ideals. If we were not willing to do vile things to protect ourselves, willing to throw innocent people into prison for years until they are eventually released, accused of nothing, convicted of nothing.
      It is a legacy that will plague our children. They will wonder how we could have allowed this. We'll claim that we didn't know. But we do know. D'Aquino, once convicted a traitor, in death performs a great service to our country by reminding us. If only we will listen.

WE'VE ALL GOT A SPARE

     Vasilios Gaitanos and his wife, Dimitra, show up on the 10th floor for their appointment, as instructed, to check in with the guard. Usually I'd have them sent down to the ninth floor, but Vasily is older, and ill, and hurrying up to greet them seems the thing to do.
      I'm rewarded by watching Vasily guide his wife downstairs, to my office. A gentle touch. A whispered "ena, thio, tria" -- "one two three," in Greek — as they reach the bottom of the escalator.
      She is blind — blinded in a car crash 11 years ago. But they are not here about her. They are here about him. Vasilios Gaitanos' kidneys are failing. He has been on dialysis for three years.
     He used to play piano in the old Denny's Den, if you remember the sprawling Greek restaurant and club on Broadway. He doesn't play much anymore.
      "Now I'm looking out for only health," he says.
      Vasily, 61, has beaten cancer three times. He has just passed the two-year cancer-free period required before he can be put on the waiting list for donor kidneys.
     Dialysis is a stopgap — I didn't realize that before meeting him. It only approximates the miracle of the kidneys, only imperfectly filters the poisons that build up in your blood. So while on dialysis, your systems breaks down — particularly your heart, and Vasily already has had heart valve trouble.
      The average wait for a new kidney in Illinois is five years. Without a kidney, Vasily will probably die before then.
      The couple are in my office because their friends think — hope, pray — that maybe, if I write about him, then somebody would step forward and give Vasily a kidney.
     This is not in keeping with my understanding of how people operate though, I admit, that if you were going to donate a kidney to a stranger, then Vasily is the sort of man you want to donate your kidney to.
      "He's a very likeable man," says cardiologist and long-time friend, Dr. Maria Balkoura. "Everybody in the Greek community knows him and loves him."
      How likeable? I held my breath when I asked him his blood type, and was relieved to hear it is O+, because I'm A+, and I was worried, watching him dote on his wife, that I'd end up giving him my own kidney.
     I can see how it would be tempting. A person only needs one kidney to get by, and giving one to Vasily might give him another 20 or 30 years instead of two or three.
      Watching him tenderly squire his wife out of my office — did I mention that he is also losing vision from the dialysis? — I realized that such an act would not save just one life, but two.

MIRACLES DO HAPPEN

     Kidney ailments are complex, and rather than rely on Vasilios' understanding of the subject, I thought it prudent to also speak with Dr. Susan Hou, chief of the renal transplant program at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood.
      She said that Loyola's waiting list has 594 people on it, that 12,000 kidneys become available each year, nationwide, while 65,000 people need them. Dying while waiting for a kidney is all too common.
     We spoke for a long time, about the dynamics of the waiting list — children under 11 get preference. We spoke about the logistics of kidney transplants — the hardy little organs are good for up to 24 hours outside of the body.
     I was almost off the phone when I thought to ask her: level with me — does Vasily have a chance? Do people ever donate their kidneys to strangers?
     "There are some amazing stories," she said. "One woman mentioned it to a neighbor at a block party, and that neighbor gave her a kidney. Sometimes a stranger will call and want to give a kidney to anyone who needs it."
     Really? I asked, incredulous. People are really that generous?
      "I've given my kidney to somebody I didn't know," she said, as matter-of-fact as can be.
      It was three years ago. A patient of hers needed a kidney. Dr. Hou thought she might be a match, and she was. So miracles of kindness do occur. Maybe one will occur for Vasilios Gaitanos and his wife Dimitra. I sure hope so.

Today's chuckle

     This sharp line, from Kathleen Norris, is quoted in Only Joking by Jimmy Carr and Lucy Greeves:
     In spite of the cost of living, it's still popular.

      — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Oct. 1, 2006