Grandfather shares experience after awake kidney transplant surgery at Northwestern Medicine
CHICAGO (WLS) -- A Zion man is the second to recover from an awake kidney transplant at Northwestern Medicine.
ABC7 Chicago is now streaming 24/7. Click here to watch
Harry Stackhouse was diagnosed with COVID-19 in December 2019, which is when doctors noticed one of his kidneys was failing, and the other was only working at 2%, according to Northwestern.
The father of six and grandfather to 17 began dialysis treatment, when one of his daughters offered to donate her kidney.
"I wanted my dad to get a kidney transplant so he could go back to living the way he was before his renal failure and go back to work," said 45-year-old Trewaunda Stackhouse.
Stackhouse said he did not want to intrude on his daughter's life and he was skeptical about the procedure.
"I was skeptical at first, but Trewaunda assured me it would be okay. She said, 'Dad, this is the same type of anesthesia that's used when women have C-sections; you can do this,'" the patient said.
READ ALSO | Northwestern Medicine performs its 1st awake kidney transplant procedure in under 2 hours
On July 15, Stackhouse underwent a surgery that took just under two hours. He said he did not feel anything and has been able to go on one-mile walks everyday since being discharged.
Stackhouse fit the criteria for what Northwestern Medicine is hoping to do as it establishes the Accelerated Surgery Without General Anesthesia in Kidney Transplantation program, also known as the AWAKE Kidney Program.
Dr. Satish Nadig is the transplant surgeon and director of the Northwestern Medicine Comprehensive Transplant Center who performed Stackhouse's transplant.
"Patients who have cardiopulmonary disease may be at higher risk for general anesthesia," Dr. Nadig said. "There are also some patients around the country who have had complications from their intubations in the past and do not want to be intubated. An awake kidney transplant procedure could be their best option."
