Marengo woman willing to donate her kidney – in hopes of finding one for her husband

Teresa Baber has gone through all of the testing needed to donate one of her kidneys.

At 66, she’s healthy and able to donate a kidney, but that doesn’t help her husband, Mike Baber, 67. His kidney function continues to deteriorate, but he’s been unable to find a donor match among his family.

The Marengo couple hopes to find someone willing to make a swap. The hope is that Teresa Baber’s kidney would go to a recipient who has a willing donor they do not match with either. Her husband would get that person’s.

“I am not a match for Mike, but I am accepted to be a donor,” Teresa Baber said.

The National Kidney Foundation calls what the Babers hope to find a paired donation.

“If the recipient from one pair is compatible with the donor from the other pair, and vice versa, the transplant center may arrange for a ‘swap’ – for two simultaneous transplants to take place,” according to the foundation’s website.

Mike Baber’s doctors are at the University of Illinois Chicago. He sees Dr. Stephen Bartlett at a UI Health clinic in Rockford so that patients in northern Illinois don’t have to drive into Chicago for care.

“The best outcomes are from living donors,” Bartlett said, adding that outcomes are even better if the recipient has never been on dialysis.

Mike Baber hasn’t had to go on dialysis yet, but he’s had one surgery to place an arteriovenous fistula in his arm and is looking at getting another one in January. The implanted fistulas provide for better blood flow for dialysis, but that is a last-ditch outcome for him.

“I will do everything I can to avoid dialysis,” Mike Baber said.

He isn’t sure what caused his kidney disease.

“I don’t drink or smoke,” he said, but he was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, chronic inflammatory bowel disease, when he was 13.

Then, a decade ago and because of his Crohn’s disease, Baber had a ileostomy, disconnecting his colon to instead eliminate into a bag. “In the last 10 years or so, I lost a lot of fluid” from that condition that may have contributed to the kidney disease.

His kidney function has generally remained above the cutoff line for dialysis, with his estimated glomerular filtration rate levels above 20. He drinks 2 to 3 liters of water a day, takes his medicine, and works from his home office as an addiction counselor and psychologist, talking to clients via Zoom calls but making house calls too.

“I like to take on the worst of the worse cases,” Mike Baber said.

He also has served on the McHenry County Mental Health Board for eight years.

“I want to be of service to people,” he said of the volunteer position.

He’s not sure that he deserves a kidney, however.

“I am used to being the doctor, not the patient,” he said. “It is hard for me to advocate for myself.”

It’s also hard for him to consider who might not get a donated kidney if he’s a recipient.

“I don’t want to take one away from a child,” he said. He does want to help others.

“When someone needs something that I have the ability to help with … I don’t look left or right. I step up. I want more time to do that – more time for more lives to affect," he said.

Teresa Baber has been through all of the bloodwork and testing to verify that she’s capable of donating a kidney.

“I have never had such a thorough exam, but there are not enough matching markers to donate to Mike,” she said.

They were hopeful when they saw an article about Debbie Koerber in the Northwest Herald. Koerber, of McHenry, also needs a kidney and has a friend with Type 0 blood who is testing at Minnesota’s Mayo Clinic to donate to her.

Koerber and Teresa Baber talked, but as they are working with different health care providers, a swap wouldn’t work out.

Mike Baber has Type 0 blood. His wife has A-positive, as do both of their daughters.

There are coordinators working with the Kidney Transplant Program at University of Illinois Health, Bartlett said, who aid in working out the kidney swap the Babers hope to find.

There was a time that the idea of a swap raised eyebrows because it may mean someone who is less ill could get a kidney.

“Swaps are a reasonable way to accomplish living donor transplants,” Bartlett said. “Patients are much more successful when they ID a living donor. We can schedule the surgery, and outcomes are superior.”