When Issam Andoni answered his phone the morning of Saturday, Aug. 26, he had a healthy dose of skepticism about what the person on the other end of the line was telling him.
Though the Virginia resident had just the prior day been formally placed on the transplant wait list at The University of Toledo Medical Center, here was someone saying they had a kidney for him — if he could get there.
UTMC surgeon Dr. John Rabets poses with Issam Andoni after performing his successful kidney transplant.
“It’s very hard to believe. To be honest, I didn’t believe it when they called and said I had a kidney,” Andoni said. “When I describe it to people, everybody is amazed how it happened this quickly, and not only this quickly but how everything wound up that I could make it in time.”
Andoni, who lives just outside the nation’s capital, is back home now, doing well after a six-week stay in Toledo following his procedure.
“The new kidney function started functioning the same day. They told me it could take a week. Sometimes it can take months to work,” he said. “My labs were improving almost immediately.”
Andoni will be featured later this week during a celebration earlier this summer of UTMC performing its 3,000th kidney transplant since the transplant program began in 1972.
Despite that long history, UTMC was not at all on Andoni’s radar when he was diagnosed with serious kidney disease in 2021.
Though he quickly got on the transplant list at a D.C.-area hospital, he was told to expect a wait of seven to 10 years.
Initially accepting of the wait, things changed for Andoni when several willing kidney donors were screened out and his worsening condition forced him to begin dialysis this summer.
Issam Andoni and his wife, Jihan.
That’s when his wife came across UTMC’s transplant program, which, with a median wait of just a little more than three months, is one of the fastest adult kidney transplant programs in the country.
After a couple of visits to Toledo and a bevy of tests, Andoni was officially placed on UTMC’s wait list Aug. 25.
Dr. John Rabets, the surgeon who performed the transplant, said though UTMC’s reputation for quickly transplanting patients has been well earned, Andoni’s case was exceptional.
“Nationally, the median wait time is about five years. Our patients, on average, are getting transplanted much faster than that. We evaluate every kidney offer we receive with a fine-tooth comb to provide opportunities for our patients,” Rabets said. “The main obstacle to overcome was for him to be able to travel quite a distance on such short notice. Fortunately, everything aligned so that it was possible. His surgery was straightforward and successful. I am delighted by his progress.”
The most difficult part of the whole ordeal for Andoni may have been getting here.
Because everything came together so quickly, he had not yet been able to fully plan out his travel to Toledo were he to receive a call that a kidney was available for him at UTMC.
Instead, he hopped in an Uber bound for the airport and frantically begun searching flights that could get him to Toledo within the four-hour deadline he’d been given.
Despite a slight delay with airport security in D.C., he and his wife made it to Toledo in time for the procedure to move forward.
“When your kidney is failing, your real hope is to get a kidney transplant. Dialysis is not something you can manage in the long-term. It prevents you from living your normal life,” he said. “I was looking forward to the transplant, and I’m really pleased with the service at UTMC, especially the staff. They were extremely helpful. I received almost daily calls following up on medicine, following up on how I feel.
“Thank God my wife did the search, discovered Toledo and we decided to give it a try.”
