Sisters Part Of Historic 18-Kidney Swap

“I was nervous, but I was ready to do anything to save my sister.”

Precious Chiles, sitting next to her sister Helena Bradley, thus explained her decision to donate one of her kidneys to her sister last month. Bradley’s kidneys were failing and Chiles said stepping up for her sister was the clear choice.

On Thursday, just about a month after Chiles and Bradley underwent surgery, the two sisters, donor and recipient, were happy and healthy.

The story does not end there. Bradley did not receive her sister’s kidney. Instead, Chiles donated her kidney to Cheryl Murphy of Bridgeport, whom neither of the sisters had met before, and Bradley received a kidney from another perfect stranger, Jimmy Labati, who lives in Sandy Hook.

Chiles and Bradley’s surgeries represent two links of an 18-person kidney exchange connecting nine kidney donors with nine recipients. The transplant operations took place at Yale-New Haven Hospital between May 9 and June 21, and all went successfully. The exchange, which was organized and carried out by Y‑NHH’s Paired Kidney Exchange Program, is the largest in Connecticut’s history.

Yale-New Haven administrators and medical staff joined the participants, their friends, families and members of the press in a hospital auditorium Thursday afternoon to share the good news about the groundbreaking exchange.

Of the 18 donors and recipients, 14 are from Connecticut, hailing from nine towns across the state, and two of those 14, Bradley and Chiles, are from New Haven. Two of the remaining four are from New York, one is from New Hampshire, and the last, Richard Ewing, is from Florida. Ewing said he was born in Connecticut and that his aunt, Nancy Crighton, who was one of the nine kidney recipients, still lives in the state.

Hospital administrators and medical staff joined the participants, their friends, families and members of the press in an auditorium owned by the hospital Thursday afternoon to share the good news about the groundbreaking exchange.

The Paired Kidney Exchange Program helps potential donors who wish to donate a kidney to a loved one, but who are not able to do so because they are not a compatible organ donor for that loved one. The program’s staff find other potential donors in the same situation and organize kidney swaps that match donors with the most compatible recipients within the group.

Chiles, like some others in the exchange, entered the Paired Kidney Exchange Program when doctors told her she was not a perfect match for her sister but might be a better match for other patients waiting for a kidney. Two of the donors in the exchange, Robin Gilmartin of West Hartford and Jeffrey Kilson of Dover Plains, N.Y., were altruistic donors, meaning they had no family members or close friends receiving kidneys and donated simply out of the goodness of their hearts.

At Thursday’s press conference, Paired Kidney Exchange Program Peter Yoo described the moment that he and his associates, Joyce Albert and Grace Regala, while poring over computer logs and patient files, realized that an 18-way exchange was possible.

“It came up on the computer, and we sat there and we looked at it, and it all sort of made sense,” Yoo said. ​“Everyone was going to get an appropriate kidney, and we were going to overcome some otherwise insurmountable hurdles.”

Yoo reiterated that some of the kidney recipients at Thursday’s conference would not have been able to receive kidneys without the massive partner exchange. Yoo, who has performed kidney transplants since 2004, told the Independent that the biggest kidney exchange he took part in prior to the 18-person exchange involved four kidney transfers.

For Bradley and the eight other recipients of new kidneys, the exchange means a chance to live free and healthy again. Bradley said she was on dialysis for seven years before the successful transplant this June.

“It was depressing and stressful, but I tried to keep a positive head,” Bradley said of her time on dialysis.

Bradley, who works in one of Yale’s dining halls, said she continued to work throughout her time on dialysis up to the day before her surgery.

Bradley received one kidney from another one of her sisters about seven years ago, but that kidney began to fail not long after the surgery. She said she received two calls about possible transplant kidneys last December and this January, but she was sick at the time and did not want to risk undergoing the operation.

Now that she has a healthy kidney, she can’t wait to go on a long-overdue honeymoon with her husband of four years.

“I haven’t decided on a place yet, but I have a few in mind … maybe Puerto Rico,” Bradley said.

Chiles, whose 3‑year-old son Carter, also attended Thursday’s conference, said she was somewhat nervous about undergoing surgery because ​“anything can happen during a surgery.” She said she worried about what would happen to Carter if something were to go wrong. But she ultimately decided to donate because she said she would not have been able to live with herself if she knew she could have saved her sister’s life and didn’t do so.

Bradley said she was not told who her kidney donor was until Thursday morning, when the hospital organized a meet-and-greet between donors and recipients. Until Thursday, the hospital refused to release that information, even to those involved in the exchange, to maintain confidentiality. Chiles said she knew she was part of a multi-person exchange prior to the Thursday, but was unaware that the exchange involved as many people as it did until the meet-and-greet.

Chiles met the recipient of her kidney, Cheryl Murphy, at the event before the press conference Thursday.

“It was amazing meeting her,” Chiles said. ​“I mean, a part of me is in her.”

Jimmy Labati, the donor of Bradley’s new kidney, called meeting Bradley ​“a great experience.” He added that it was nice to see where his kidney went and to see how happy she was.

Labati’s wife, Janet Labati, was one of the nine kidney recipients in the exchange. Jimmy and Janet Labati, who were joined by their daughter, Maria, both spoke at the conference Thursday.

Janet Labati revealed that this was the third kidney she received through a transplant. The first, donated to her by her mom when she was a teenager, began to fail one year after the operation. The second, donated by a registered organ donor who died in a motorcycle crash, lasted nearly 30 years. She said she would not be here today if she had not received that second kidney, and urged those present to consider registering to be organ donors.

She also thanked her husband, Jimmy, for enlisting in the paired exchange program so that she could receive a kidney.

“I don’t think anything comes closer to defining love than what you did, and I thank you for that,” she said, before embracing her husband.

Any Connecticut resident over the age of 18 can register to become an organ donor online.