Liver Recipient To Testify For New Rules Proposal Ends Regional Organ Allocation

Thu., Sept. 10, 1998

By Kim Barker kimb@spokesman.com

He moved to California to get a new liver.

Shane Kalamarski, who graduated from Rogers High School in 1985, couldn’t get one any closer to home.

“It was awful,” he said. “I had two really good friends who moved down there with me. If it wouldn’t have been for them, I would have had no friends, no support, because I had to leave all my family and friends back in Spokane.”

Kalamarski, who moved back to north Spokane in April, is scheduled to appear today at a U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., on proposed new rules for organ transplants. He’ll be with the president of the National Transplant Action Committee, who’s testifying at the hearing.

Kalamarski supports a Department of Health and Human Services proposal that would eliminate the current organ-allocation system. That system divides the country into regions and gives potential recipients priority to organs donated in the same region.

The new proposals would eliminate the local-organsfor-local-people guidelines. Instead, organs would be made available to the sickest patients, no matter where they live.

Area transplant doctors have said the proposed rules, announced in March, would cause local people to wait even longer for organs. The sickest people often need more than one transplant, using up valuable organs.

Kalamarski, who is 31, learned he had hepatitis B about 12 years ago. The virus destroyed Kalamarski’s liver, and he went to Seattle to be evaluated for a liver transplant in 1995. But the University of Washington Medical Center wouldn’t transplant livers for people with chronic hepatitis B, Kalamarski said.

The University of California San Francisco Medical Center agreed to do the transplant. So Kalamarski moved to California in July 1996, became a resident and got on Medi-Cal, the state’s version of Medicaid.

Officials with the National Transplant Action Committee say Kalamarski would have gotten a transplant sooner and closer to home under the new federal rules.

Local journalism is essential.

Give directly to The Spokesman-Review's Northwest Passages community forums series -- which helps to offset the costs of several reporter and editor positions at the newspaper -- by using the easy options below. Gifts processed in this system are tax deductible.

Meet Our Journalists

Jesse Tinsley

Meet Jesse Tinsley. As a certified drone pilot, this veteran Spokesman-Review photographer often can be seen capturing beautiful aerial photographs of our region. Sometimes though, the job requires getting down with the dogs.
Jim Meehan

Jim Meehan is no stranger to Zag Nation. As the lead writer covering the Gonzaga men’s basketball team, he tells the stories behind the game and gets fans a bit closer to their favorite players.
Molly Quinn

There is no artist in Spokane like Molly Quinn. Her whimsical style is instantly recognizable to readers of The Spokesman-Review. She has painted gorgeous illustrations that instantly elevate the journalism accompanying it. She brings to life the stories that defy photography. She makes our pages better.
Rob Curley

Spokesman-Review editor Rob Curley loves to talk with people and learn about their lives, whether it's a best-selling author or a stranger he meets downtown on his walk to lunch. It's that inquisitive nature combined with a playful sense of storytelling that helps make our newspaper different than most.