“It Won’t Hurt, Cause You’re My Brother”
By NILAH RODGERS
Football was the most important thing in 14-year-old Todd Conner’s life, until his brother Allen was born, on October 7, 1975. The squirmy nine-pound infant charmed the would-be grid star, and soon Tood was vying with his sister Lori Ann, 15, for opportunities to help their mother with the new arrival.
One afternoon in November—less than six weeks after the baby’s birth—Todd was holding Allen in the crook of his arm, natural as football. As he lowered the baby into the bassinet, he noticed that the infant’s head was wet with perspiration. Todd held out a finger and five tiny fingers twined around it. Then, suddenly, the chubby hand tightened convulsively and the baby’s body went limp.
“Mother!” Todd shouted. “Something’s wrong!”
Unable to revive, her infant son, Carolyn Conner rushed Allen 20 miles from their home in Conyers, Georgia, to Henrietta Engleston Hospital for Children in Atlanta. Their doctors shaved off his blond ringlets and punctured the soft spot on his head with intravenous needles attached to tubes. Physicians probed, palpated and X-rayed; technicians pricked the tin fingers, drawing blood, and left with pipettes filled, slides carefully smeared and labeled. Nurses collected urine samples recorded his fluid intake, blood pressure and temperature.
Two days later, the diagnosis showed that Allen had suffered permanent kidney impairment. The two vesico-ureteral valves on the tubes leading from the kidneys to the bladder did not function properly. Thus, urine flowed back into his kidneys, severely damaging them.
To repair the valves and stop the backup, Allen needed surgery. But he was too young and weak for such an intricate operation. Instead, the surgeons opened Allen’s abdomen and made an incision in his bladder to excess urine could drain through a catheter. The major surgery would have to wait until he weighed at least 16 pounds.
The first time he saw his baby brother with the needles inserted into the veins beneath his scalp, Todd turned away. “Does it hurt him? He asked weakly. Though his father, Perry Conner, and his mother and the nurses assured him Allen couldn’t feel the needles, Todd’s own head hurt sympathy.
Seven weeks after entering the hospital, Allen was allowed to go home. The interim surgery had put life back to him. He learned to sit up and crawl. However, at seven months, he still weighed less than his birth weight.
One day Tood found him asleep in the family room and saw that his skin was white as talcum powder. Todd’s yell immediately brought his mother. She grasped the skin of the baby’s abdomen between her thumb and forefinger. Instead of being supple and falling back in place, the pinched-up ridge remained. “He’s dehydrated,” Carolyn said, gathering Allen up and heading for the hospital.
This time it was five weeks before doctors let the boy come home, and after they did there was a family council. “The nephrologist says Allen will probably develop kidney failure-possibly before he’s a year old,” Carolyn explained, her voice shaking.
But during the following weeks, with diet and heavy meditation, Allen’s condition stabilized. His birthday came and went: Tood organized a party for him, with cake, punch and balloons. He learned to walk, stand on his head, whistle, and pull off his clothes. His favorite pastime was galloping around the house on Todd’s back, shouting, “Go, horsy!”
By December 15, 1976, Allen weighs 16 pounds and the Atlanta nephrologist told Carolyn Conner that he could now withstand the valve-reimplantation surgery.
Allen knew from his earlier hospitalizations that “losing” his shoes, meant pain would follow. When his parents had their tiny son ready for the hospital, Todd bent down and tied a double knot in his brother’s shoelaces. “Hang on to these shoes, boy,” he said with affection. Then prayed: ‘Dear God, please let him come back.’
The operation went smooth and Allen returned home on Christmas Eve, weighing 13 pounds. His favorite Christmas toy came from Todd—a big green frog he could ride, even when he felt so bad he couldn’t walk. Once again the toddler commandeered Todd for his horse and made him his general slave.
Allen’s well being lasted until July 1977. Then he lost his appetite. Nothing, not even Todd’s coaxing, could get him to eat enough to maintain his weight.
Doctors suggested garage—force-feeding through a tube inserted in Allen’s nose and running into his stomach. With a high-calorie formula and four daily feedings, the boy gained a little weight and grew an inch. Meanwhile, his blood tests, taken every other day, indicated stable kidney function.
Then suddenly in January 1978, the tests showed further deterioration. By mid-January he walked unsteadily he walked unsteadily, and by mid-February he stumbled occasionally. Again the Conners took him to a specialist in Atlanta. The doctor said he had a bone disease that goes with kidney failure.
By March, Allen could hardly walk. So Todd carried him the burden of his knowledge far heavier than his little brother. Every time the child was taken to the doctor, Todd insisted on a complete report. Twenty-five times Allen’s head had been shaved for intravenous feeding.
Now came new word from the specialist: Allen must go to the University of Minnesota Hospital for hemodialisis, a blood cleaning process—called dialysis for short.
“The hospital is world-famous for its success in treating kidney diseases in very young children,” Carolyn Conner assured her family. Then after a long pause she added, “Allen will have to have a kidney transplant this summer. If it’s successful it will cure the bone disease too.”
For a moment Todd could not speak. Then he lifted his eyes to his parents. “Mine,” he said. “I want to give Allen one of my kidneys.”
“Todd, your mom and I thought you’d volunteer,” his father replied. “But we’re against it. If either you or Lori give a kidney and it didn’t work, and then something happened to you…” He chocked over the words. “Besides, with only one kidney, you might not be able to play football.”
“I don’t care about that!” Todd blurted. “Allen needs a kidney, and when that plane leaves Minneapolis, I want to be on it with him. You’ve got to let me be tested.”
One week later, Todd and Lori Ann—who had also countered a kidney and insisted on being tested—sat with their parents in the office of Dr. John Najarian at the University of Minnesota Hospital. “Rejection is the major concern,” Najarian said, ‘so we check for tissue compatibility. Tissue typing is done through four genetic makers called antigens. For a donor and recipient to be compactable, at least two antigens must match from a sibling, there’s a 90 to 95 percent change of success. It’s a 70 to 75 percent chance if the donor is a parent, and 50-50 if it’s some other family member.”
Perry and Carolyn Conner, and Lori, all proved two antigen matches. Todd showed a four-antigen match—so close to Allen’s tissue that only an identical twin could be more compactable. His parents consented to the transplant.
While 2 ½ -year-old Allen continued dialysis as an outpatient, Todd began the psychological testing required before such surgery. One day the topic was sports. The psychologist asked, “You think you’re a pretty good football player?”
“Fair,” Todd muttered.
“Ever dream of being the fasted back, the highest-scoring end?”
“Yeah, I’ve thought about it.” Todd’s voice was high, tense.
When the session was over, Todd dent to the dialysis section of the hospital and stood outside the door listening to the soft whir of the machines cleaning his brother’s blood—a four-hour, three-times-a-week process. He scuffed his toe, the way he’d do for an onside kick. How did that doctor guess about those dreams”? Yes, he would miss sports, especially football. But he’d have something better to take its place: the finest little brother who ever lived.
On May 10, 1978, Todd woke early, long before the scheduled 6:30 a.m. surgery. Despite the pills meant to calm him, butterflies churned in his stomach the way they did before a big game. A hospital orderly bumped opens his door with rolling bed. The 16-year-old climbed abroad and was wheeled off toward surgery.
“Todd!” He heard his brother’s voice, shaky with tears. An attendant pushed another cart toward him with a tiny lump under the sheet—Allen. The little boy looked white and afraid, but his right arm wiggled out from under the sheet, and he waved and smiled.
The orderlies pushed the carts into the same elevator. Allen kicked his sheet off, exposing red shakers—laced and tied in a double knot! He climbed over on Todd’s cart and locked his skinny arms around his brother’s neck.
“After today,” Todd said huskily, “you’re not going to hurt anymore.”
“ Know,” said Allen. Suddenly his chin began to quiver. “Todd, when they give me part of you, will you hurt?”
Hiss little brother had suffered so much, yet here he was worrying about him. “Nope,” Todd said, pulling Allen close. “It won’t hurt me, because you’re my brother.”
The elevator door slid open and the attendants rolled them toward adjoining rooms.
A dozen green-clad doctors and nurses clustered around Allen. An incision was made down the middle of his abdomen, and his shriveled kidneys were removed. Then Dr. Najarian went into next room where another surgical team had opened Todd halfway around at the waist on one side, to remove the right kidney. Dr. Najarian returned almost immediately, cupping in his big hands something that looked like a shiny wet potato. He placed it in a basin of sterile solution to wash away the blood and cool the kidney for a better take. Meanwhile, Todd’s incision was closed and he was whisked to recovery.
Allen’s abdominal cavity looked far too small to accept his brother’s kidney, nearly three times the size of his own. It was a tight fit, but doctors knew that soon after the operation the kidney would shrink to the size Allen needed. Then, as he started to grow, it would grow with him at a normal rate. Six hours elapsed before Dr. Najarian, grinning with relief, reported to the Conners that Todd’s kidney was functioning in Allen.
The next day Todd asked to be wheeled down to Allen’s room. Through the bed railing the two brothers kissed and repeated each other’s names over. For the next two weeks, Allen received interjection serum—administered via tube inserted in his neck during surgery. Then, 14 days after surgery, Allen and his parents flew home to Georgia. [Todd had left a week later].
Today, nearly three years later, with his doctor’s approval, Todd is working as a landscaper in his father’s business. Allen is in kindergarten and has achieved the normal height and weight for a child of his age. Once a month his mother takes him for blood tests at a nearby clinic; the results are phoned to Minnesota for monitoring. For the rest of his life he will take ante rejection medication. But thanks to Todd’s precious gift, the lively 5-year-old now has a future, a chance for a full and happy life.
