Delaware woman advertises for kidney on her car

• About 275 people are waiting for a kidney transplant at Christiana Care, waiting an average 5 years
• Patients who receive kidney transplants generally live longer and enjoy a better quality of life than those on dialysis
• Nationwide, roughly one-third of organ donors are not related to or friends with recipients

Bill Miller’s garage game room is shrouded in plastic and thick blankets, resembling a morgue.

The pinball machine no longer bleeps and the billiard cues no longer plink. The 1966 Ford pickup, which Miller spent three years restoring, is waiting on a new transmission. His 550-pound custom-built Harley is cocooned under a giant plastic bubble.

“Everything’s at a standstill,” the ashen-faced Smyrna resident said.

Dying of end-stage renal failure, Miller, 53, has waited six years for a transplant. After his family and friends either refused to donate or were deemed unsuitable matches, daughter Melissa cast a wider net.

She advertised for organs on the back of her silver Chrysler:

“Looking for someone to donate my dad a kidney, Type A-positive or O blood,” the 29-year-old wrote in red marker on her rear windshield. “Please (heart symbol). You only need one. 302-632-6526.”

Within four months, more than 30 strangers offered their kidneys, she says. Only one – illegally – requested payment of $10,000.

Melissa’s car experiment, though extreme, is not surprising, according to transplant experts. Faced with a severe shortage of organ donors, patients and their families have resorted to papering Starbucks with flyers, placing ads in the church bulletin and composing heartfelt posts on Facebook to be shared among friends and friends of friends.

On a more corporate level, independent website matchingdonors.com boasts nearly 15,000 potential donors, while dating app Tinder promotes contact between like-minded users who support organ donation. At least one donor already found a match that way, according to a recent report by ABC News.

Nationwide, roughly one-third of organ donors are not related to or friends with recipients, according to Matthew Cooper, a board member at United Network for Organ Sharing, a nonprofit that coordinates organ transplants in the U.S.

Beth Tice, a Dover mother of five, offered her kidney to Miller after reading about Melissa's efforts on Facebook.

"I have always said that tomorrow is never promised to us," said the 37-year-old receptionist. "That's the way I was raised. If you can give it, you give."

After Tice's Camden house burned down last year, strangers gave her food and clothing, she recalled. Her fourth child, born premature 15 years ago, received a life-saving transfusion of donated blood.

Taken together, those life events inspired her to undergo testing last year to see if she could be a match for Miller. Unfortunately, doctors told her she had an irregular heart rhythm and a blood clot in her leg, meaning she couldn't donate.

"I actually felt guilty," she said, "as if I couldn't help my own kid or help my own parent."

For a successful transplant, “you don’t need to have a perfect (genetic) match,” according to Cooper, who directs the kidney and pancreas transplantation program for MedStar Georgetown Transplant Institute in Washington, D.C.

Still, only about one in five people who volunteer their organs are cleared for transplantation, he said. Evaluators rule out “high-risk” candidates, such as those who are morbidly obese, abuse drugs, or have diabetes, uncontrolled blood pressure, actively spreading cancer, hepatitis, or HIV.

At the same time, recipients are ranked based on the urgency of need, the length of time on the waiting list, blood compatibility and other factors.

Most of Miller’s potential donors are younger than 35 and come from Delaware or neighboring states, according to Melissa, who can’t donate a kidney because she has autoimmune issues and no health insurance. She has instructed would-be donors to contact Christiana Care for follow-up testing.

There’s only one problem: Miller is no longer on Christiana Care’s transplant list. His name was removed temporarily after he suffered a nervous breakdown and tried to commit suicide in late September. The family has received no word on potential donor matches from Melissa’s car campaign. Hospital officials are mandated to keep donor information confidential.

Prospective donor Pamela Marvel says she has played phone tag with Miller's Christiana social worker for months. Like Tice, she learned of Miller's situation on Facebook through a friend of a friend.

"It's just pay it forward," she explained. "When I saw that, God spoke to me that I really have to consider it. That's giving back."

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Marvel, 41, still feels indebted to strangers who helped pay her late husband's medical bills before he died of pancreatic cancer last year. Friends held a benefit in Little Creek, raising funds and drove Bruce "Chicken Hawk" Marvel to Philadelphia for treatment while his wife worked at her warehouse job.

"When someone does something nice to you, you should do nice to them," she said.

But given the administrative delays, Miller is concerned donors might lose their enthusiasm for the cause. His daughter feels powerless.

“You always say you would do anything you can. But when you can’t do things to help the person you love,” Melissa said recently, trailing off.

Christiana Care officials would not comment on Miller’s case due to privacy concerns. In general, transplant recipients are evaluated by a multi-disciplinary team who consider physical and mental health, along with lifestyle and insurance coverage, to maximize survival rates, according to Emily Pruitt, Christiana Care’s living donor coordinator for the kidney transplant program.

Finding a living donor who is willing to donate on a person’s behalf is “the express lane for the recipient to get transplanted,” she said.

Every 11 minutes

Today, more than 275 people are waiting for a kidney transplant at Christiana Care. The average wait time is five years.

Across the country, more than 120,000 people pin their hopes on life-saving organ transplants; roughly 16,000 kidney transplants occur each year. Of those, about 6,000 come from living donors.

Living donors are preferable to deceased donors, according to Cooper, because they increase the recipient’s survival post-transplant from 11 to 18 years. Even more ideal is finding a living donor with the same HLA antigens (proteins in the blood) as the recipient, which can increase the lifespan to 22 years.

Demand for organs far outstrips supply. The number of donors is stagnating, while every 11 minutes, another person’s name is added to a U.S. organ transplant waiting list.

Advocacy organizations have tried to educate people about the importance of signing up as organ donors. In Delaware, where 51 percent of people with a driver’s license or ID choose to be organ donors, the state mandated last year that all high school students study organ and tissue donation and transplants.

Patients who receive kidney transplants generally live longer and enjoy a better quality of life than those on dialysis, said Cooper.

Three days a week at four hours a pop, Miller gets hooked up to a machine that cleans his blood of toxins, since his kidney can no longer do the job. Between sessions, he can pack on 13 pounds of water weight.

Born with only one kidney, he estimates he has undergone 40 surgeries since being diagnosed with kidney problems more than a decade ago.

A former alcoholic who was arrested for DUI, Miller was slow to change poor eating and drinking habits. He said he was never properly educated on how to adapt to a failing kidney. He believes his rheumatoid arthritis and a blood-clotting disorder, which left him confined to bed, only hastened his decline.

Initially, friends and family offered their kidneys in passing. When Miller followed up, they said that they couldn’t take off work or didn’t have proper insurance.

His wife of 23 years, from whom he is now separated, offered her kidney, but she is a two-time cancer survivor. Besides Melissa, Miller has one child, two stepchildren and four grandchildren.

His 4-year-old grandson prays for his Pop Pop to leave the hospital so “we can play together.” In 2009, Miller spent five weeks on life support after his son found him face down on the bed, unresponsive.

These days, Miller’s feisty Chihuahua, Chico, makes sure his owner actually leaves the house.

“He would donate a kidney if he could,” the retired diesel technician said, nodding at the dog.

In late 2014, Miller came close to beating the odds. The transplant team contacted him, offering a kidney from a donor who had died of head trauma. After Miller learned that the man was previously incarcerated, he turned down the organ, concerned that the owner hadn’t properly cared for his health.

“It’s like buying a used car,” he said, joking.

But disappointment turned to bitterness.

Unable to urinate on his own for two years, his body and spirit crumpled, Miller took a mix of pills in late September. He immediately called his wife and daughter, who rushed him to Christiana Hospital.

While there, he says he met a staffer, a “suicide sitter” who sat by his bedside and told him: “There’s good in you and that’s why God is keeping you around.”

After three weeks of inpatient therapy, Miller emerged a religious man who took mile-long meditative walks and traded fast food for fruit cups. He started a support group for people on dialysis, after watching three of his friends die while awaiting transplants.

“I’m going to beat this,” he vowed recently, pulling up his shirt to reveal a road map of scars. “I’m not going to sit down and die.”

“I’m going to get a kidney and live to 100.”

He still marvels at the number of strangers who have reached out to help after his daughter took the initiative.

“She’s always stood up for me,” he says. “Everybody has a lot on their plate, but she makes time for dad.”

“She’s daddy’s little girl.”

Melissa’s phone conked out last month, causing her to lose most of her dad’s kidney contacts. Even if a donor is not a positive match, she noted, it’s possible the person could donate on behalf of Miller through a paired kidney exchange. In the last week alone, Miller has had four surgeries to limit blood clots in his right arm.

He appeared upbeat in an interview last month, imagining himself with a new kidney in 2017, cruising around Florida in an RV or on a hog.

“Anything on your mind just goes away,” he said, wistfully. “It’s just you and the open road.”

Contact Margie Fishman at (302)-324-2882, on Twitter @MargieTrende or mfishman@delawareonline.com.

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By the numbers

The kidney was the first human organ to be transplanted successfully in 1954. Until the early 1980s, however, the potential of organ rejection limited the number of transplants performed. Today, life-saving organs for transplant include the heart, kidney, pancreas, lungs, liver and intestines.

21: People who die each day in the U.S. waiting for organ transplants

275: Approximate number waiting for a kidney transplant at Christiana Hospital

51: Percentage of people in Delaware who choose to be organ donors as listed on their driver’s licenses or identification

Nearly 40,000: Number of lives saved since 1974 through organ donation by Gift of Life, the organ procurement organization for Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey