Flashback 2011: Giving stranger a kidney; 'I'm really looking forward to it'

Detail from "Still," by Damien Hirst, at the Art Institute of Chicago

    Last week, I wrote about a woman who donated a kidney to a stranger. Which reminded me: I had been here before, not only focusing on a young lady making an "altruistic" donation, but observing the surgery at University of Chicago Hospitals. I enjoyed revisiting the pair of columns, and thought you might too. Today we meet the donor, tomorrow we watch the surgery. 

     Before the sun comes up Tuesday, Rachel Garneau's boyfriend will drive her from her home in Elmhurst to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where a surgeon will operate on this perfectly healthy 20-year old college junior and remove her left kidney.
     Typically, this kind of donation is made to save the life of a loved one—you give your kidney to a brother or sister, for instance, suffering from kidney failure. Or, if you are not a suitable donor for your relative, you give a kidney into the national donation system, and somebody angling for a kidney for their loved one gives one to yours, forming a "cluster" of donation that can involve half a dozen people.
     But Garneau's four siblings are fine. She doesn't know anyone who needs a kidney. She just wants to donate hers.
     "We have a young lady, an incredibly generous person who said, 'I want to give up my kidney to just anybody,'" said Dr. Yolanda T. Becker, the transplant surgeon who will perform the operation and director of the hospital's kidney program.
     "I'm excited," said Garneau, a few days before the surgery. "I'm really looking forward to it."
      Altruistic donation of a kidney is not as rare as one might imagine. Nearly 1,000 people have done it nationwide. There is a website, Matchingdonors.com, that says it facilitated 100 organ donations and has 2,000 people signed up hoping to donate.
     Still, the number of people willing to give kidneys is nowhere near the need. The waiting list for kidneys nationwide has 82,000 names on it, and with dialysis such a taxing procedure, 12 people a day die in the U.S. waiting for a kidney to become available.
     Garneau is majoring in anthropology at Notre Dame, and is planning to study in Rome in the fall. She plays intramural volleyball. Eventually, she'd like to spend a few years in the Peace Corps, then start a family.
     What inspired her to consider this now?
     "I honestly don't remember what got me into this at all," she said. "I first started thinking about this three years ago, when I was 17. I've never known anybody who had kidney problems, I never knew anybody who had serious medical issues. One day, I started thinking about it, doing the research ... a few hours later, I went downstairs I told my parents I wanted to donate my kidney."
     Her mother and father reacted the way most parents would.
     "They sort of ignored me at first because they thought I was joking," she said. "When they realized I was considering it, they said, 'No. End of discussion.' They said the surgery is risky, what if you get hurt? What if you die? It seemed one of those things you say on a whim."
     But she persisted. Why?
     "Honestly, I don't know," she said. "I don't think it's a religious thing. I was raised Catholic. I never really felt like God was a part of this, necessarily. I guess it could be, but I never really felt that way. I decided to do it. I got this idea in my head and it won't go away. I can't not try to do something. My family has always been very giving, very charitable toward others. That could be a part of it."
     This kind of altruism is certainly nothing new for Garneau. When she was 15 she told her parents she wanted to help people overseas.
     "I decided I wanted to volunteer in Africa," she said. "They let me go with a friend for a month when I was 16. I went to Ghana to work in an orphanage."
     Her father, who works as a meat cutter, declined to be interviewed; her mother, a special education teacher, died suddenly in 2008 from an infection picked up in a hospital a month after she was diagnosed with leukemia—though Garneau points out that she decided to donate her kidney before she knew her mother was sick.
     Garneau approached the hospital last fall and assumed she'd donate her kidney by Christmas.
     Instead, she had half a year of interviews and medical tests.
     "We really put her through the wringer to make sure it was something she really, really wanted to do," said Dr. Becker. "The potential donor is seen by a social worker, a psychologist, a living donor advocate, to make sure we are not doing anything bad."
     The hospital held an ethics conference with two dozen doctors, nurses, social workers and psychologists to discuss the case.
     "Some were arguing very vehemently that there is no medical benefit to her," said Dr. Becker. "Some people felt she was very young."
     Many would-be donors are sent away.
     "About 30 or 40 percent we reject, for all kinds of reasons," said Dr. Becker. "They don't realize just what they're up against. We want to give them multiple opportunities to ask questions or back out. We made her come back almost half a dozen times. She's so unusual, so young. We want to make sure we're protecting our donors. I'm not going to whack somebody over the head and take their kidney out."
     What about the Hippocratic Oath, what about "first do no harm"?
     "She's an adult," said Dr. Becker. "She gave me permission. I did speak with her father, just to give him the facts. The operation is risky—any time you operate, there is a minute but very real chance of death. Still, I feel very comfortable that this young lady has given informed consent. She knows what she's getting into. If I didn't feel comfortable, I wouldn't proceed."
     Dr. Becker has done this before. I wondered how she felt, taking a kidney from a perfectly healthy young woman.
     "To be honest, in some ways it's more stressful to take one out of healthy person than to put one into a sick person, because you are taking something away from that healthy person," she said. "It's not an operation they need to have done. They're not sick. There is a slightly added level of stress."
     I mentioned to Dr. Becker that, in my view, if Garneau were signing up for the Marines we wouldn't think twice of applauding her selflessness, even if she were going to fight in Afghanistan, where she could possibly be injured in a far more grievous way than losing a kidney (your remaining kidney enlarges to pick up the slack, and since kidney disease typically strikes both kidneys, having an extra is only useful in the case of physical trauma, like a car accident).
     "That was the argument brought up at the ethics conference," she said. "It's less dangerous than going to Iraq and getting shot."
      Garneau couldn't quite put her finger on her exact motive. What does Dr. Becker think of what Garneau is doing?
     "I just think she's on a higher moral plane," she said. "She's great. She's awesome. She is just an incredibly generous person who saw this is the right thing to do."
      —Originally published in the Sun-Times May 30, 2011

Latest Trump move on border wall is straight out of Hell

Dante in the Piazza Santa Croce in Florence

     Almost any reaction to the daily doings of the unhinged, untruthful, craven, cruel, possibly insane, probably criminal, confirmed fraud we call our president can be justified at this point, from simmering outrage to protective indifference.
     And heck, I should add that unyielding enthusiasm is a common reaction that can also be justified — because you can rationalize anything. I hear every day from readers who believe passionately that Donald J. Trump is the best president the United States has ever had or could ever have, particularly when compared to the infamous criminal regime of Osama bin Obama.
     You think I’m joking? Let’s reach down and hook an email wriggling in today’s Spam filter.
     “It seems that people with morals are the underdogs these days,” Vicki Falsey writes to me and half the Sun-Times masthead. “So all the people that voted for Trump and love him don’t have a voice. Since Trump has gotten in office, your paper has been writing these disrespectful articles about the president. I cannot imagine anyone ever writing anything this ignorant about the worst president to ever be in office, Obama. Just so you know, Obama was the worst thing to happen to our country. He brought it down. Insurance will never be affordable again for the working class people. But, no one and I mean no one disrespected him. You would have lost your jobs if you said anything negative against Obama and his wife. Yet everyday, you mock and insult the president. You should be fired.”
     There’s more, but you get the point. And no, I didn’t argue with her. To what purpose?
     So to recap: many reactions to our leader, across a broad spectrum. That said, I believe my personal reaction to Wednesday’s jaw-dropper must be unique.
     The news: that Trump is so desperate to have a few miles of new border wall by election time, as a sop to his xenophobic base, he ordered aides to seize private property (“Take the land,” he said), skirt environmental concerns, and not to fret about any crimes they might commit (“Don’t worry, I’ll pardon you,” he told them).

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You don't seem to have a face

      All this social media stuff. What a waste. Arguing with strangers. Talking to ourselves, talking to computers, listening to computers, gazing at analytics that don't mean anything.
      I was postponing doing meaningful work Wednesday morning, and glanced at the portrait associated with my gmail account at the newspaper. My column bug from, gee, maybe 10 years ago. Maybe more. Out-of-date. The paper had a photographer shoot a new one earlier this year. They don't always use it, but it can take a long time for old stuff to work its way out of the system, and I'm not one to complain.
     This, I could change myself.
     So I clicked on the portrait, and the system easily pointed me toward inserting a new photo. I dragged in the new shot, jiggled with its positioning, clicked "Set as profile photo." Nothing. I tried a second time. That's when I noticed gmail's explanation of the problem.


    "Are you sure people will recognize you in this photo? It doesn't seem to have a face in it."
    Well, lah-de-fuckin'-dah. It sure seems like a face to me. But then, I'm biased. Older, sure, grey in the beard. But my face, and I'm sticking with it.
     Will people recognize it? Heck, some days I hardly recognize. I can't speak for all "people"—there's too much of that going around as it is.
     Annoying? Sure. But, honestly, I'm glad the system is so inadequate. I'm sure someday people will go to prison on this kind of error, but right now there are still a few bugs in the system, and that day isn't quite here yet, though the Chinese are rushing us toward it. Nor are they alone. This week it was learned that Amazon's Ring security system is partnering with 400 police departments, handing over images snatched from your doorbell camera for the "new neighborhood watch." An Orwellian phrase if ever there were, because that used to mean you watching the neighbors, and now it means strangers watching us all.
    Another reason not to have a doorbell camera.
    The third time, I got the photo to be accepted, using a very human strategy: I tried again, altering nothing from the first two attempts. Only this time it worked. Third time's the charm, as we used to say when we, you know, used to say stuff.
     There are still a few bugs in the system, thank God. The day this all works smoothly will be a scary day. Not that we'll notice anything is wrong.

Socialized medicine? We’re already a third of the way there

     Ready for a shock? Because if you aren’t, maybe you should stop reading now ...
     Wait, no, please don’t stop reading. That would defeat my whole purpose .
     Sorry. I’ll begin again.
     Ready for a shock? What percentage of Americans have health insurance? Sixty percent? Seventy? I didn’t have a number in mind before finding the true figure, but probably would have guessed around 80 percent.
     The answer: 91.4 percent of Americans in 2017, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Or 294 million. Quite a lot.
     Not perfect. Particularly if you are among the uninsured 8.6 percent. But not as bad as I thought. And most surprising, given all the Republican blathering about “socialized medicine” is those insured break down into two-thirds private and one-third public — Medicaid, Medicare. More than a third of insured Americans — 37.7 percent — are protected by the government. So if you’re wondering how socialized health insurance might work, ask grandma.
      When I had my spine surgery last month, I considered myself lucky — “blessed” was the word that got into print. Blessed that I had good insurance, and wasn’t being bankrupted — I hoped — by a single operation. Medical problems are cited as the cause of two-thirds of the bankruptcies in the United States (although the actual cost for health care is only part of that; inability to work is the other).
     Granted, mine was good insurance, provided by a good workplace. When I checked before the operation to see how many sick days I had accrued, the answer was: “26 weeks.” I used two.
     Where am I going with this? I got a letter from a reader — if a note printed in all caps on a 3-by-5 index card shoved into an envelope can be called a “letter” The punctuation is mine:
     “HEY NEIL ... PLEASE FINISH YOUR NORTHWESTERN STORY. LOVE TO SEE ALL OF THE BILLS, DOCTOR INCLUDED. EVERY ITEM FOR THREE DAYS FIND THAT WOULD MAKE A GREAT STORY. TOTAL BILL. LIKE TO SEE IF YOUR NEW SPINE IS WORKING.”
     This falls in to the “double-dog dare” school of reader feedback. The question he poses is legitimate, but the taunting tone so schoolyard — what are you, 14? — reflecting a paranoiac misunderstanding of how newspapers work, at least this one.

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Whimsical Candy

 Chris Kadow-Dougherty

     Writing every day, with columns in the paper three times a week, I can't afford to go to too many places, report on what's going on, and then fail to find a way to get it online, or into print.
      It happens, though. There was the time I went to Fermilab. They were still trying to discover the Top Higgs Boson and had taken apart the superconducting supercollider to, I don't know, clean it or something. I went, spent the day talking to physicists about the quest. I actually stepped inside the disassembled linear accelerator—how many guys can say that? Leaving, I thought back on my five or six hours there and realized I was just as out to sea about what was going on there as I had been when I walked in.
     I didn't write about it.
     Another time, a few years back, I hung out at Whimsical Candy, with owner Chris Kadow-Dougherty, watching her make candy—anyone can do that, just show up. It's always being made. The kitchen is right there. I can't recall why I never wrote anything. My hunch is, she was soft-spoken, and modest, and didn't fit any of my limited range of pre-conceived narratives. I loved the candy; I liked her. But I failed to convey any of it to you.
     That didn't keep me from going back, from time to time. Like last Thursday. I finished lunch at Gene & Georgetti, and was hobbling toward the Loop, cut down North Franklin on my way to Union Station. Whimsical Candy is right there, at 175 North Franklin. I had five minutes to spare. How could I not? Particularly since my wife had been having a taxing day. I knew Whimsical makes her favorite chocolate bar in the world, the Raspberry Truffle Crisp: a thick rectangle of dark chocolate, raspberry ganache, orange caramel and crispy ... rice, I suppose.
     That would surely perk up her day. I popped down, and was reminded what a pleasant, colorful, fun, enticing, out-of-the-way place it was. I chatted with Chris. She let me sample their newest treat, frozen cocoa. With a dollop of real whipped cream and a maraschino cherry. We talked about Serendipity, a place in Manhattan that also offers frozen cocoa. I made sure to pick up something to tide me over on the train.
    And then I was gone, thinking, "I'm falling down on my basic duty as a journalist—to tell people about places and things they might not know about."
     So there you have it. You owe yourself a visit to Whimsical Candy Kitchen, 175 N. Franklin. Do not be put off by the price—the Raspberry Truffle Bar is five bucks and change. But if you eat it in stages, by cutting yourself a slice, as we do, it'll easily make three or four servings. The thing is fresh and delicious in a way that no candy you've had before is, shockingly so. (My wife, when she first tried the Raspberry Truffle bar, let out a highly uncharacteristic string of obscenities that I will translate out as "Golly! This really is very, very, very good candy." )
     So not the deep dive into Chris' world that I failed to produce, and might very well try again someday, because I hate to give up on such things. But at least public notice. Every corner in the Loop has a Garrett's popcorn nowadays. But if you want to bestow some Super Secret Hidden Chicago on yourself or a loved one, you'll give this place a try.

Stakes are high as city waits for mayor to show her hand

     I’ve been around Chicago: inside the scoreboard at Wrigley Field and through the skybridge between the towers of the Wrigley Building. Up a communications mast atop the Hancock — now dubbed “875 N. Michigan Avenue” — and down into the 39 miles of freight tunnels under the Loop.

     So I believe I know a bit about the city. But I can’t recall a mayor ever giving a speech of any significance, at least not to match the potential impact of Lori Lightfoot’s “State of the City” address set for later this week.
      Oh, Rahm Emanuel once took out his top hat and cane and tried to tap dance around responsibility for covering up the murder of Laquan McDonald. Richard J. Daley gravely intoned his litany of lies during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. And don’t forget Harold Washington’s delighted cry of, “You want Harold? You got him!”
     Memorable? Certainly. But important? In the way that Lightfoot’s speech will reveal her strategy for dragging Chicago out of the deep debt hole her predecessors dug? Never.
     She’s calling her talk the “State of the City,” though I instantly dubbed it her “Sorry Kids, Christmas is Canceled” speech. Because we don’t need a lecture to know the news is bad. You want it plain and simple? OK, close your eyes, take three deep cleansing breaths and brace yourself. Here it comes, the unvarnished truth in seven words:

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Flashback 2003: Flying aboard Concorde a supersonic dream.

The Concorde

     "Satire doesn't belong in the newspaper," an editor I respect told me, after the following ran in 2003. 
     He's right, in the main. And to be honest, after I wrote this, I vowed never again to lead readers astray, even at the start of a column, because fellow reporters did come up to me the day this ran, expressing amazement that I had been aboard the Concorde. 
     I didn't feel badly that I had fooled them so much as because I had written a column that could be tossed away after a couple paragraphs.
     Unless, now that I think of it, they were merely pulling my leg. That's possible. I hope it's the case. I can be gullible myself that way.
     I should say, now, it was the product of pure envy. The paper sent Mary Mitchell on the last flight of the Concorde, leaving me tapping my chest, my lips opening and closing like a dying goldfish, mouthing, "Me! Me! Me!"
     Friday's visit to Greenland also fooled someone I know and respect, who asked me to send him a postcard from Greenland. Which again made me feel bad, for the above reason. A columnist who writes a column readers can abandon after a few paragraphs has failed. 
     Bottom line: the scrapings of the internet and my arid imagination are nothing compared to what I would certainly have found had the paper actually sent me there—although what is in Greenland is not the point of the news story this week. The point is how completely Donald Trump mangled the entire matter. 
    So a bit of fun, keeping in mind it is always, always, always better to go.
    
     ABOARD THE CONCORDE: The champagne flutes are plastic—even here, Safety First!— but the bubbly is a fine 1995 Veuve Clicquot, and does much to soothe the solemn sense of finality that accompanies this last flight of the needle-nosed, supersonic jet that once seemed to herald a new era of globe-gobbling speed. There was much noise and hoopla at Heathrow before the flight. But after British Airways officials handed us lucky few passengers our Concorde carry-ons jammed with luxury freebies and we climbed aboard, a certain quiet sadness set in.
     I must admit also feeling a bit nervous as we pulled back from the gate—I kept thinking of the film of that Air France Concorde engulfed in flame—but the steady stream of champagne helped, as did thinking of my deskbound colleagues and competitors back in Chicago, who'd give their eye teeth to have been plucked from . . .

Author bathed in swift luxury

     Sorry. Lies, all lies. But knowing full well the burst of envy that we reporters feel whenever an acquaintance draws a really plum assignment, I couldn't resist giving my circle a little frisson of shock and resentment along with their Friday morning coffee. Of course I wasn't on the last flight of the Concorde, or any of the previous 27 years' worth of flights. I was right here, mired in routine, shuffling aboard boring old Metra with the rest of the haggard, hollow-eyed commuters. But the people who quickly cast aside the paper with a sneer of disgust, thinking, "God I hate that lucky bastard," don't know that, do they?
     I do sincerely feel bad about missing the flights. The Concorde seems to me to be the capstone of all those 1950s Jetson dreams of what our future would be like. We'd all be in Spandex cat suits and weird cobalt sunglasses, drumming our fingernails against the oval supersonic jet windows, gazing at the curve of the Earth and hoping the market didn't change in the five hours it took to get from Chicago to Tokyo.
     So long as the Concorde was flying, I could kid myself that someday I'd be rich or lucky enough to snag a seat. I was just coming to grips with the slap of grim reality when it struck me that I didn't actually need to fly aboard Concorde; I could soften the disappointment of missing the trip by cutting right to the stock boastful rendition of the experience.
     Frankly, I think not going gives a person a clearer perspective. Reporters who actually find themselves aboard the Concorde are lulled by the swankness and excitement, and seem to think that the story is the little bowls of cashews they set out, when of course the important thing to observe is that the Concorde was the Irish Elk of airplanes, the step too far on the evolutionary scale, an enormous white elephant that the United States just barely kept itself from being gulled into. The Europeans tried vigorously for years to get us to shoulder the expense of Concorde with them, under the rubric of the "Super Sonic Transport." Congress argued over it forever, and seeing how routinely suckered they are by sinkholes like missile defense and the B-1 bomber, it's amazing that they actually took a pass, after years of debate (for a while, when dealing with a persistent annoyance, I'd say, "This is harder to kill than the SST," until I realized that nobody knew what I was talking about and I was dating myself).
      But just because a piece of transportation is a rococo relic doesn't mean you can like it. Speaking for myself, I find more ardor for strange technological dead-ends than for the sleek machines that work. My favorite plane is a monstrous flying milk bottle with stub wings called the Granville Gee Bee Super Sportster, an early 1930s racing plane that killed most of its pilots.
     You never know what is going to float somebody's boat, transportation-wise. I'm looking at an improbable book that showed up on my desk a few weeks ago, a beautiful large green volume called A Railroad Atlas of the United States in 1946 (Volume 1: The Mid-Atlantic States).
     The book is by a former colleague's dad, Richard C. Carpenter, and is exactly what you'd think it is: an elaborate, hand-drawn map of all the various train lines right after World War II.
     What possible use this book could be is a mystery to me. The introduction only gives a hint, offering "hope that, by producing a graphic record of this transportation network, present and future generations may learn valuable lessons from one of the most glorious episodes of our transportation history." I plan to hold onto mine, because it's so pretty, and you just never know.
     Whoops; lots of people jump from the start of a column straight to the end. So we should return to the fiction, just to keep up the ruse.

Flight could have been longer

     "You have lipstick on your cheek," Madonna laughed, dabbing at my face with a hankie she had removed from her decolletage and dipped in champagne.
     I admit that, under the circumstances, speed was a bad thing, and before I knew it the three hours had passed in pleasant conversation, consumption and reverie. We were landing in New York, and I sat back, closed my eyes and smiled, bidding a heartfelt and fond farewell to Concorde.
     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Oct. 24, 2003