Twenty-six-year-old Natalie Butler did not have to think twice about voluntarily undergoing surgery when it came to her mother Roberta.
Roberta Butler, who has diabetes and high blood pressure, needed a kidney last year, so Natalie Butler took a three-month leave of absence from the U.S. Army to provide the donation, returning to work on Monday.
“I never really thought about it,” said Natalie Butler, a 1996 graduate of Broad Run High School and a 2000 graduate of the University of Dayton in Ohio. “She said she needed one. I was healthy, so I said take mine. She’s my mother. … She deserves to live a happy, healthy life.”
Natalie Butler said this as she sat in her mother’s Countryside home Jan. 1, the day before she was scheduled to return to the Fort Huachuca, Ariz. military base. She showed the three scars she has on her stomach from the operation, similar to those of her mother. They got the scars on Oct. 9, the day they underwent surgery at the Washington Hospital Center.
"It went like clockwork,” said Roberta Butler, a Countryside resident since 1985 and a Northern Virginia native. She serves as a housing planner for the Fairfax County Department of Housing and is a 25-year employee with the county. “My insurance put us in contact with the Washington Hospital Center, and they took it from there and coordinated all the activities with the transplant. It gave me a new outlook on life … a whole new opportunity to live.”
NATALIE BUTLER'S surgery lasted three hours. A surgical team removed one of her kidneys, while a second team prepared Roberta Butler for the transplant, a surgery that took three-and-a-half hours.
After the surgery, Roberta Butler lost 16 pounds in one day, since her body had not been filtering out and removing waste, a substance that was becoming a toxin to her body.
“It was so bad, her body was rejecting itself,” Natalie Butler said.
Roberta Butler's stomach hurt, she could not eat and her skin had darkened in color, she said. But as Natalie Butler said, "If you’d seen her before, no one knew. She was going to work, doing all she could in the church, just going on."
Roberta Butler had called her daughter to explain the situation. In June 2003, Roberta Butler's doctor told her that her kidneys were functioning at 18 percent and that if the level decreased to 15 percent, she would have to go on lifelong dialysis. Or if she qualified, she could get a transplant, a process that could require a minimum of five years on a national waiting list for a cadaver kidney or less time if a family member or friend agreed to donate. The body has two kidneys and can function with 40 percent of kidney function.
Natalie Butler was the first to offer to make the donation.
“It’s a risk," Roberta Butler said. "To give that kind of gift shows love. She is willing to give part of herself."
They both underwent several health and blood tests to determine whether they qualified for the surgery. Roberta Butler's regular tests took about a month and Natalie Butler's, a week. Natalie Butler had to undergo additional testing through the Army to receive approval from her commander and the Army transplant services.
Natalie Butler’s doctors encouraged her against the surgery, worried about the history of diabetes within her family. And Roberta Butler worried her daughter would put herself at risk. “If anything happens to her, what about her career,” she said.
For Natalie Butler, "Other than the risk from the regular surgery, for the donor, it's not problem," she said. "Everybody needs one kidney to live."
NATALIE BUTLER was not the only family member willing to provide a kidney. Her twin sister Nicole Thomas and sister Terri Carter, 37, also would have volunteered if Natalie Butler had not done so first.
“You only got one mother,” Nicole Thomas said.
"If Natalie hadn’t come through, I was going to be the next one on the list," said Henry Thomas, Nicole's husband. “A sacrifice like that should be given to anybody you care a lot about.”
Mother and daughter wanted to talk about the "sacrifice," hoping to encourage others to become donors. "It's the greatest gift you could give," Roberta Butler said, adding that 40,000 Americans are in need of a kidney.
"I feel lucky I was able to give when someone needed it," Natalie Butler said. "The shocking thing I learned, this is an easy thing to do. The benefit so outweighs the fear."
"I think when you’re faced with a life-threatening disease, the small things we complain about don’t matter anymore," Roberta Butler said, adding that she has become more accepting and appreciative of the things that happen within her life.
"Mom's a minister, so we're praying about all of this," Natalie Butler said. She joined the Army in August 2001 and serves as a combat documentation publication specialist. She plans to teach after she finishes six years of service with the Army and is working on her master's degree in technical communication.