California man in dire need of a kidney transplant finds 1-in-100,000 match: His wife
By the time he was in his mid-50s, he had pretty much given up on the idea of finding a life partner.
But fate had other plans.
Little did he know a wink on a dating app from an English teacher with a warm smile and three children would — five years later— have him exchanging vows in Hawaii. He and his new wife, Mirna, exchanged the customary promises to love and care for one another in sickness and in health.
After nearly a decade of marriage, a grim diagnosis put those vows to the test.
Jim, now 66, started having trouble with his kidneys about two decades ago. He managed the issue with medication for years.
But nearly three years ago, doctors found a mass on his left kidney. Instead of removing it, surgeons performed a cryoablation, a minimally invasive procedure that uses extreme cold to destroy abnormal tissue. Complications during the procedure resulted in another surgery, he said.
'After several months my kidney function dropped by more than half, and it was at that time we realized I'm going to need a kidney transplant pretty quick,' he said.
But 'transplant' and 'pretty quick' don't go hand in hand. Finding a suitable donor — one with the proper blood type, antibody levels and geographic location — all play a role. The National Kidney Foundation estimates that it can take two to five years or longer to find an appropriate match.
The couple was devastated.
'He was so desperate and so sad. We were crying,' said Mirna Irish, 56. 'And he said, 'What am I going to do? What's going to happen?' And I just thought, 'I can give him my kidney.' '
Mirna has had her share of struggles. Her first marriage at age 18 ended in divorce, leaving her a single mother to three children. She lived in Mexico teaching English until her son, then 17 years old, was hit by a drunk driver in a crash that left him in a wheelchair.
She left her home and job behind to move to the United States to get her son the care he needed. He now owns a business selling portable hand controls for disabled drivers and is happily married, Mirna said.
Meeting Jim, she said, was like 'finding peace.' And she wasn't about to let that go.
The need for donor organs nationwide is much greater than the supply. The Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network estimates that another person is added to the national transplant waiting list every 10 minutes.
The odds of Jim and Mirna having compatible organs was a long shot — roughly one in 100,000. Still, Mirna said she would even donate to a stranger if it meant her husband could get an organ faster.
The San Diego couple got the shock of a lifetime when they learned that Mirna's kidney was a genetic match to her husband's.
'It's very rare,' Jim said. 'Out of 12 genetic markers, four of them are identical matches.'
But Jim still had more hurdles to overcome. He underwent a surgery to remove half his colon after suffering a bout of diverticulitis, and received iron infusions and hemoglobin shots. Then doctors found a 3-centimeter cancerous tumor on his right kidney. He underwent another cryoablation and as of a few weeks ago is cancer-free, he said.
On Friday, Mirna will finally be able to give Jim the gift she's waited so long to deliver: a working kidney. If all goes according to plan, the couple hopes to celebrate their ninth wedding anniversary next month in Europe, visiting Germany, Switzerland and France.
For Jim, it's hard not to feel lucky that the woman he waited so long to meet is also the person saving his life.
'We struggled so hard to find each other, we're not ready to let either one of us go,' he said, his voice catching with emotion. 'I can't imagine my life without her.'
'I think I'm here for a reason,' Mirna said. 'It's a blessing to be able to give life — and to give it to the love of my life, it's even better.'
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Chicago Tribune
10 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
A Peruvian mother's mission: Seeking a miracle for her twin sons in the US
In the small family restaurant in Rogers Park Monday evening, Walter Guevara sat at a table and devoured yucca fries and Peruvian-style rice with stewed chicken, hungry despite his numerous cancer treatments. The 18-year-old and his twin, José, are both fighting tumors. But after Walter experienced years of what his family describes as medical mistreatment in Peru, their mother, Maria Ysabel, decided to seek medical care in the United States. She saved money, filled out an application and waited months as Walter's condition steadily declined before learning she and her sons had received their visas. Last week, she cried tears of gratitude for the care Walter has received since their arrival to the U.S. this March, including their short trip from Rochester, Minnesota, to Chicago for their country's Independence Day. They are originally from Chiclayo, Peru, so they feel a special connection to Chicago because of Pope Leo XIV, who was born in Chicago but served as a bishop in Chiclayo for eight years. 'We're so grateful for everyone we've crossed paths with here — especially the hospital workers and general consul of Peru,' Ysabel said. 'I arrived here not knowing how to speak English, without enough money to buy water.' The Guevaras represent hundreds of thousands of people who cross the U.S. border seeking better medical treatment than what is available in their home countries. The humanitarian visa application process has always been difficult and expensive, said Veronika Bustamante, the consul general of Peru in Chicago. However, she noted that Trump has increased the price of visas and tightened control of the process as part of his immigration crackdown efforts and travel ban policy. 'And, even if the administration grants a visa, sometimes they don't accept the person in immigration controls here at the airport, and some of them have had to return,' Bustamante said. Under the federal visa policy, Maria, José and Walter are allowed to stay in the U.S. for only six months. After asking for permission to enter the country to receive better care, they are now navigating the U.S. medical system on their own terms, managing appointments and treatment plans in an unfamiliar language while racing against the clock set by their immigration documents. Ysabel, 56, said she and her five children find strength in one another. The single mom left her job, her family and three of her children behind in Peru to come to the U.S. for cancer treatment for Walter. José, who has yet to receive treatment for the tumors found in his leg, has paused his studies to care for his brother, whose cancer has advanced. The twins stay closely connected to their family back home, calling their siblings and relatives regularly. And for a few days last week, they found comfort in the Peruvian community in Chicago, which wrapped its arms around them to help them feel more at home. Four years ago, Walter was an active student. He swam and played volleyball, pingpong and basketball with his brothers. He loved art and building design. But in January 2021, he was playing games with his brothers when he felt a sharp pain in his right leg. It was persistent, he said, so he asked his mom to take him to a doctor. After his medical team confirmed his case, Maria moved the twins to Lima to be close to the National Institute of Neoplastic Diseases, a Peruvian public hospital that specializes in cancer detection, diagnosis and treatment. The doctors there first told Walter he had a rare cancer that develops in the soft tissues of the body, such as muscles, tendons and ligaments. Doctors also discovered that José had two tumors on his right leg — in the same place where Walter's were — that required ongoing attention. Meanwhile, Walter's condition deteriorated. A tumor on his calf swelled up to the size of a bowling ball, as seen in a photo reviewed by the Tribune. Unhappy with the treatment in Lima, and now with two sons with tumors, Ysabel panicked. She told herself that Walter had to be able to receive better care somewhere else. She found the Mayo Clinic online. 'I didn't know whether I could actually get there. I just thought, 'That's where I'm going,'' she said. But first, she had to obtain visas for herself and her sons. She wanted to bring both the twins to the U.S., to get immediate assistance for Walter and, eventually, consultation and help for José. She interviewed with the Peruvian authorities and was initially denied. She then appealed and continued to make her case. She saved money from her teacher's salary to pay for the airfare and the legal fees associated with the visa process. But it's harder today than it was when they were applying for visas, she added. A single visa before Trump was elected cost her $180, she said. The cost for a visa went up $250 this month, she added. In December 2024, by what she called 'the grace of God,' she and her sons received their visas from the U.S. government. After asking the Mayo Clinic for an appointment, they arrived in the U.S. in March of this year. They said they are staying in a Ronald McDonald charity home in Rochester, Minnesota, near the hospital there. Walter was immediately hospitalized upon arrival at the Mayo Clinic. The doctors informed Ysabel that the cancer had spread and that Walter had pneumothorax, or a collapsed lung, when he boarded the flight to the U.S. They told her it was a miracle he survived. They performed an above-knee amputation on Walter's leg, and with the help of a prosthetic company in Rochester and a local clinic, he is adjusting to walking again. After finding out about Walter's lung condition, the doctors told Ysabel that his cancer was terminal and advised her to bring him back to Peru to be around family for his final days. But she's determined to get a second opinion and more medical advice. And, if they go back, José will have to fight his tumors in Peru, where they worry he might not receive adequate treatment. 'As a mother, I want to feel satisfied that I did everything possible until the very end,' she said. 'I want to fight until the very end.' Because Walter and José represent different levels of advancement of the same illness, the twins could offer a unique research opportunity, Ysabel said. She hopes that will help them in their bid to stay in the country. Sometimes, Walter expresses guilt to his mother for diverting her attention away from his other siblings. She tells him that he is the one who is most vulnerable, and that there is no better way to live than fighting for what you love. 'But deep down, I'm afraid,' Ysabel admitted. 'Living in this agony of not knowing whether your child is going to pass away tomorrow or the next day — it's horrible.' Walter's twin, José, spent most of his last two years in school making sure his brother could get around in his wheelchair. He then put his medical studies on hold to come to the U.S. He is by his brother's side for every appointment, and the two of them play games on the patio of their home in Rochester. 'He sits and I stand,' José said. 'Sometimes he even moves around with his prosthesis, and we play volleyball together — like we used to do in school.' Walter, for his part, tries to stay positive. He's currently enrolled at the Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería in Peru, where he takes online architecture classes. He says the pain in his leg has been mitigated after the amputation. The hardest part of Walter's cancer treatment has been the distance from their home in Chiclayo, the twins said, where 'everyone knows each other.' They were very connected to their church community there. José even said that two of his siblings were confirmed by the pope. Amid their appointments and time in waiting rooms, Ysabel arranged a last-minute trip to Chicago as a respite to celebrate Peru's Independence Day on July 28. Bustamante, the consul general, introduced the boys to Cesar Izquierdo, owner of the Taste of Peru restaurant in Rogers Park, who gave them an architectural tour of the city and helped them find a place to stay. They ate at his restaurant and spent one night listening to jazz. On July 26, they attended a ceremony celebrating their nation's holiday at Our Lady of Mercy Parish in Albany Park. They toasted their pisco sours and danced to Peruvian music. They had a picnic the next day with Izquierdo's two daughters, one of whom — Sara — is a medical student at the University of Illinois Chicago and is helping Walter and José connect with doctors. She has worked with migrants for months through the Mobile Migrant Health Team, and she and fellow medical student Miguel del Busto said they sent requests for a second opinion to 15 hospitals, all of which have some documented history of treating or studying Walter's rare form of cancer. One cancer center in Texas told the family that a consultation could cost as much as $37,000 because of the specificity of Walter's condition, according to an email reviewed by the Tribune. Treatment could range anywhere from $500,000 to $750,000, another hospital told the family in a separate email also reviewed by the Tribune. And Izquierdo said Trump's cuts to Medicaid make it harder for hospitals to see low-income patients such as the twins. 'Just getting to the point of a reply from these hospitals has been a challenge,' she said. 'So imagine having to navigate a similar situation, but alone … and you have all these additional language and cultural barriers.' Although they have received some assistance and donations, they said they still face tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid bills from their time at Mayo Clinic in Rochester. Izquierdo is working with a social worker at UIC to help draft a letter to reduce that amount, and she made a GoFundMe to help. Mayo Clinic did not immediately respond to a call or email for comment. Monday evening, the group gathered around the table in the family restaurant and chatted and laughed. Moving forward, they face more daunting medical bills and concerns about changing visa laws. But for now, they're grateful for having been granted permission to come to the U.S. After dinner, they boarded a bus back to Rochester for several appointments, carrying the warmth of the strangers in Chicago who had become extended family.
Los Angeles Times
2 days ago
- Los Angeles Times
California man in dire need of a kidney transplant finds 1-in-100,000 match: His wife
For much of his adult life, Jim Irish was a self-proclaimed bachelor — moving cities every few years, too busy as a business executive and entrepreneur to devote much time to romantic endeavors. By the time he was in his mid-50s, he had pretty much given up on the idea of finding a life partner. But fate had other plans. Little did he know a wink on a dating app from an English teacher with a warm smile and three children would — five years later— have him exchanging vows in Hawaii. He and his new wife, Mirna, exchanged the customary promises to love and care for one another in sickness and in health. After nearly a decade of marriage, a grim diagnosis put those vows to the test. Jim, now 66, started having trouble with his kidneys about two decades ago. He managed the issue with medication for years. But nearly three years ago, doctors found a mass on his left kidney. Instead of removing it, surgeons performed a cryoablation, a minimally invasive procedure that uses extreme cold to destroy abnormal tissue. Complications during the procedure resulted in another surgery, he said. 'After several months my kidney function dropped by more than half, and it was at that time we realized I'm going to need a kidney transplant pretty quick,' he said. But 'transplant' and 'pretty quick' don't go hand in hand. Finding a suitable donor — one with the proper blood type, antibody levels and geographic location — all play a role. The National Kidney Foundation estimates that it can take two to five years or longer to find an appropriate match. The couple was devastated. 'He was so desperate and so sad. We were crying,' said Mirna Irish, 56. 'And he said, 'What am I going to do? What's going to happen?' And I just thought, 'I can give him my kidney.' ' Mirna has had her share of struggles. Her first marriage at age 18 ended in divorce, leaving her a single mother to three children. She lived in Mexico teaching English until her son, then 17 years old, was hit by a drunk driver in a crash that left him in a wheelchair. She left her home and job behind to move to the United States to get her son the care he needed. He now owns a business selling portable hand controls for disabled drivers and is happily married, Mirna said. Meeting Jim, she said, was like 'finding peace.' And she wasn't about to let that go. The need for donor organs nationwide is much greater than the supply. The Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network estimates that another person is added to the national transplant waiting list every 10 minutes. The odds of Jim and Mirna having compatible organs was a long shot — roughly one in 100,000. Still, Mirna said she would even donate to a stranger if it meant her husband could get an organ faster. The San Diego couple got the shock of a lifetime when they learned that Mirna's kidney was a genetic match to her husband's. 'It's very rare,' Jim said. 'Out of 12 genetic markers, four of them are identical matches.' But Jim still had more hurdles to overcome. He underwent a surgery to remove half his colon after suffering a bout of diverticulitis, and received iron infusions and hemoglobin shots. Then doctors found a 3-centimeter cancerous tumor on his right kidney. He underwent another cryoablation and as of a few weeks ago is cancer-free, he said. On Friday, Mirna will finally be able to give Jim the gift she's waited so long to deliver: a working kidney. If all goes according to plan, the couple hopes to celebrate their ninth wedding anniversary next month in Europe, visiting Germany, Switzerland and France. For Jim, it's hard not to feel lucky that the woman he waited so long to meet is also the person saving his life. 'We struggled so hard to find each other, we're not ready to let either one of us go,' he said, his voice catching with emotion. 'I can't imagine my life without her.' 'I think I'm here for a reason,' Mirna said. 'It's a blessing to be able to give life — and to give it to the love of my life, it's even better.'
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Yahoo
Medieval skeletons reveal the lasting damage of childhood malnutrition
Beneath churchyards in London and Lincolnshire lie the chemical echoes of famine, infection and survival preserved in the teeth of those who lived through some of the most catastrophic periods in English history. In a new study, my colleagues and I examined over 270 medieval skeletons to investigate how early-life malnutrition affected long-term health and life expectancy. We focused on people who lived through the devastating period surrounding the Black Death (1348-1350), which included years of famine during the little ice age and the great bovine pestilence (an epidemic that killed two-thirds of cattle in England and Wales). We found that the biological scars of childhood deprivation during this time left lasting marks on the body. These findings suggest that early nutritional stress, whether in the 14th century or today, can have consequences that endure well beyond childhood. Children's teeth act like tiny time capsules. The hard layer inside each tooth, called dentine, sits beneath the enamel and forms while we're growing up. Once formed, it stays unchanged for life, creating a permanent record of what we ate and experienced. As our teeth develop, they absorb different chemical versions (isotopes) of carbon and nitrogen from our food, and these get locked into the tooth structure. This means scientists can read the story of someone's childhood diet by analysing their teeth. A method of measuring the chemical changes in sequential slices of the teeth is a recent advance used to identify dietary changes in past populations with greater accuracy. When children are starving, their bodies break down their fat stores and muscle to continue growing. This gives a different signature in the newly formed dentine than the isotopes from food. These signatures make centuries-old famines visible today, showing exactly how childhood trauma affected health in medieval times. We identified a distinctive pattern that had been seen before in victims of the great Irish famine. Normally, when people eat a typical diet, the levels of carbon and nitrogen in their teeth move in the same direction. For example, both might rise or fall together if someone eats more plants or animals. This is called 'covariance' because the two markers vary together. But during starvation, nitrogen levels in the teeth rise while carbon levels stay the same or drop. This opposite movement – called 'opposing covariance' – is like a red flag in the teeth that shows when a child was starving. These patterns helped us pinpoint the ages at which people experienced malnutrition. Lifelong legacy Children who survived this period reached adulthood during the plague years, and the effect on their growth was recorded in the chemical signals in their teeth. People with famine markers in their dentine had different mortality rates than those who lacked these markers. Children who are nutritionally deprived have poorer outcomes in later life: studies of modern children have suggested that children of low birth weight or who suffer stresses during the first 1,000 days of life have long-term effects on their health. For example, babies born small, a possible sign of nutritional stress, seem to be more prone to illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes in adulthood than the population at large. These characteristics can also be passed to future offspring through changes in how genes are switched on or off, known as 'epigenetic effects' – which can endure for three generations. In medieval England, early nutritional deprivation may have been beneficial during catastrophic times by producing adults of short stature and the capacity to store fat, but these people were much more likely to die after the age of 30 than their peers with healthy childhood dentine patterns. The patterns for childhood starvation increased in the decades leading up to the Black Death and declined after 1350. This suggests the pandemic may have indirectly improved living conditions by reducing population pressure and increasing access to food. The medieval teeth tell us something urgent about today. Right now, millions of children worldwide are experiencing the same nutritional crises that scarred those long-dead English villagers – whether from wars in Gaza and Ukraine or poverty in countless countries. Their bodies are writing the same chemical stories of survival into their growing bones and teeth, creating biological problems that will emerge decades later as heart disease, diabetes and early death. Our latest findings aren't just historical curiosities; they're an urgent warning that the children we fail to nourish today will carry those failures in their bodies for life and pass them on to their own children. The message from the medieval graves couldn't be clearer: feed the children now or pay the price for generations. Get your news from actual experts, straight to your inbox. Sign up to our daily newsletter to receive all The Conversation UK's latest coverage of news and research, from politics and business to the arts and sciences. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Julia Beaumont receives funding from Arts and Humanities research council, British Academy/Leverhulme.
