Donating Life: Advocate Aspell Explains Why You Should Become an Organ Donor

Kevin Aspell is a giver.

A business development manager for education at Cisco Systems, he volunteers on the board of directors for City Year; donates time to Citizens Schools in Newark; provided free IT and networking advice for Teach for America; assisted with training for New Leaders for New Schools; and previously volunteered with Community Access Unlimited. Among it all, he still found time to coach rec. soccer and serve on the board of directors for the Scotch Plains Soccer Association when his sons, Ryan and Evan, now 25 and 22, were growing up in town.

So when Aspell found himself on the receiving end of another person’s donation – not just once, but twice – he developed a passion for yet another cause: organ donation.

For more than 40 years, Aspell, 57, lived with diabetes. The disease most often assaults a victim’s blood vessels, heart, and kidneys, and Aspell was no exception. His kidneys began to fail in 1996, and for three years, he received in-home dialysis treatments, awaiting a much-needed kidney transplant. Three times the hospital called, telling him to hurry to the emergency room because a possible match had been found. Aspell, however, was one of multiple candidates, and each time, another recipient who more closely matched the donor was chosen.

Finally, Aspell’s wife, Marisa, 54, volunteered to be screened to see whether she could give her husband one of her kidneys. She matched, and the two underwent the procedure in December 1999, saving Aspell’s life.

Nearly 12 years later, on Sept. 9 2011, Aspell received another new organ: a pancreas, taken from an 18-year-old from Queens who had died of a brain tumor, Aspell said. With the new pancreas, Aspell found himself entirely diabetes-free. His first non-intravenous meal, two weeks after the seven-hour procedure: non-diet apple juice and non-diet Jell-O, served at the hospital two weeks after his surgery.

“I took a picture of it on my iPad,” Aspell said with a grin. “I was nervous, man. I said, ‘Gee, check my blood sugar. I want to make sure this thing you gave me is working.’ Sure enough, it was. My blood sugar was perfect.”

Both transplants, Aspell said, demonstrated to him the need for more organ donors – in essence, for more drivers to check the “organ donor” box when they renew their driver’s licenses.

About 4,200 New Jersey residents are in need of organ donations, according to Donate Life New Jersey, more than 100,000 nationwide. Across the United States, close to 6,000 people die each year awaiting organ transplants.

“It’s so easy to sign-up, but not many people know how,” Aspell said. “All you need to do is when you go to renew your license, or you go to the Motor Vehicle Commission, you just check the little box that says, ‘I want to be an organ donor.’” Interested donors can also register online through Donate Life NJ by clicking here.

Patch sat down with Aspell and Marisa, longtime Scotch Plains residents, who talked about the transplants and their new roles as organ-donation advocates.

Patch: Tell me the two transplants.

Kevin Aspell: I’ve had diabetes since I was 8 years old. So 12 years ago, my kidneys failed, and I was on dialysis, and I went to the hospital three times, waiting in the emergency room, I didn’t get the organ, I didn’t get the organ.

Marisa and I started talking, and they were doing spousal transplants then, so she said, ‘Screw it, I’ll give you a kidney.’

Marisa Aspell: My sister offered to be a donor. They really thought it couldn't be her. And then it became easy to say, ‘Well, how about me?’ The scariest part was when they said, ‘OK, we'll test you,’ because if you're not a match, then what? Now what do we do? It was wonderful when they told us that we were. That piece was done, and we could move forward.

Patch: Couples, and especially married couples, share a great deal. But how did sharing an organ affect your relationship?

MA: It has to come from a stable relationship, of course. Once the decision is made, it's done, it's not yours anymore. It's not that you can't change your mind or anything before the surgery, but you don't have any claim to it once it’s happened. You shouldn't be asking for thanks for the rest of your life.

For us, I don't think it changed anything. I think if he ever wanted to leave, he'd have to leave the organ at the door.

Patch: Tell me about the pancreas transplant.

KA: What happened with this pancreas, it wasn’t so much a medical need as much as it was a quality-of-life need. Diabetes has lots of side effects, lots of repercussions in the disease that can hurt you. It hurts your heart, it hurts your circulation, and so, in effect, by getting a pancreas transplant, I’m cured of diabetes, I don’t have it anymore. So I can eat ice cream, I can eat donuts – which really isn’t that important – but what also will happen is that all the bad things that diabetes does to somebody can be reversed now. So that’s what prompted it.

But in the case of the pancreas, it was a cadaver transplant, it was an 18-year-old kid who died of a brain tumor, a brain hemorrhage out in Queens, and, you know, his family donated his organs, and I got his pancreas.

Patch: With the second transplant, it seems, in one sense, quite intimate – you’re getting an organ from someone else. But on another level, it also seems as inherently impersonal and clinical as any other medical procedure.

KA: They kind of make it impersonal. I wrote a letter to the family of the kid I got the pancreas from, but I couldn’t give it to them, I had to give it to the hospital staff, they gave it to New York Donors for Life, and then they delivered it to the family. You know, it could get very emotionally complicated, right, if I had any kind of relationship with the family of somebody who died and gave me an organ. So they let me express gratitude, but they try to keep a real safe and healthy distance.

Patch: With the kidney transplant, when the hospital would call and tell you that there was a potential donor, what would happen?

KA: It was simple, the hospital would call me and say, ‘Kevin, we think we have a kidney for you, come to the emergency room.’ So we’d hop in the car, we’d drive to the hospital – this was at St. Barnabas – and then I’d wait there for hours. And they still keep doing matches as time passes. So what would happen after two-and-a-half, three hours, there may have been six candidates, I may have been the fifth one, there could’ve been one person who had a better genetic match than I did. So they eventually gave the organ to that person. So I had to pack my bag and go home.

Patch: And with the spousal transplant, what was that procedure like?

KA: They brought us both into the operating room at the same time. It was really kind of weird. Marisa, they just snipped a couple arteries and veins, three snips and a little slice, and they reached in and they pulled out her kidney. For me, it was about four hours of surgery, it was much more involved.

Back then, they kind of just thanked the donor and showed them the door, which I think has changed dramatically. Now they’ve got support groups for donors, and do lots of things to support their emotional wellbeing as well.

 Patch: How have the two transplants shaped your outlook on life?

KA: I’ve always had a positive attitude; that hasn’t changed. But I was really disappointed in myself. I do lots of community work, I have a responsibility at work to do inclusion and diversity and community service, and I completely missed the bus on donor transplants. It’s a critical need. I was able to take advantage of it. I never did anything to try and recruit people to participate in the program.

 On average, about 18 people in the U.S. die a day because there’s not enough, there’s not an organ available to transplant to them. So this is easy. I want to deliver a message to as many people as I can, that there’s a critical need, it’s a simple process to sign-up, you’ll be dead, it’s not going to affect you anyway, and it can have a huge positive impact. One accident can positively impact half a dozen people, in terms of kidneys, pancreas, eyes, heart, or lungs. So it’s dramatic.

Patch: What was the moment that this was hammered home for you?

KA: Probably when I was in the hospital for the pancreas transplant. New York Presbyterian has a transplant unit. They were maybe 70 people in the hospital with all different kinds of transplants. And I started to pay attention. It blew me away that here were 70 people that were getting transplants, but there were so many more that still needed them.

Being an organ donor becomes almost intuitive. For anybody with half a brain, they recognize that their life has past, and it’s an opportunity to help other people who have a chance to live a longer life.

 I’ve understood it as a critical need with the kidney. I’ve understood it as a quality-of-life opportunity and a preventative measure with the pancreas. And I’ve seen lots of people who were close to dying, who were able to get a new liver, a new pancreas, a new kidney, and left the hospital with a big smile on their faces. It’s just the right thing to do.