Beating the Odds: Kaley Dugger won’t give up; new kidney offers hope

Kaley Dugger is having a big year.

She celebrated her ninth birthday. She’s headed to sleep-away camp for the first time.

And she received somebody else’s kidney.

When the Jefferson Elementary School student was profiled in The Spokesman- Review last August, she was continuing to recover from a devastating bout of meningococcal disease. The fast-moving bacterial infection, which struck in February 2004, nearly took her life.

Doctors were forced to amputate both of her legs below the knees, along with many of her fingers. The infection also destroyed her kidneys, and she was undergoing dialysis three times a week.

Kaley’s parents, Mike and Debbie Dugger, were not suitable donors because their blood types did not match Kaley’s. But the family preferred to find a living kidney donor because those organs do not need to be replaced as soon as one from a cadaver.

Publicity surrounding Dugger’s case prompted 20 people to request paperwork from the University of Washington Medical Center to become potential donors, Debbie says.

It was the first volunteer, a 40-something Spokane father of two, who ended up donating a kidney to Dugger. The donor prefers to remain anonymous, Debbie says. “He felt a strong calling to do this,” she says.

It took some time to get everything arranged, but Kaley’s transplant was finally scheduled for Feb. 1.

“Feb. 1 just couldn’t come fast enough,” Debbie says.

And then, three days before the operation, Kaley came down with a stomach bug. The transplant had to be rescheduled.

But she got her new kidney on March 29. It started functioning right away and she was out of the hospital in a week. The family stayed at the Ronald McDonald House in Seattle until the end of April, learning all about Kaley’s new life after the transplant, about all of the drugs she would take and the importance of keeping her free of infection. (Liquid hand sanitizer flows like water in the Dugger house.)

Not having to spend hours each week in dialysis frees up time for other things, Kaley says.

“I have more time at home,” she says. She likes to do arts and crafts projects with friends, and play house and board games, she says.

She is still waiting for the skin below her knees to heal so she can spend more time walking with her prostheses. She may need more surgeries on that area, her dad says.

“We’re getting there, but slowly,” Mike Dugger says.

Says her mom, “You want it to be over. But it’s never really over.”

Kaley’s looking forward to starting school again this fall. When she grows up, she wants to become a newspaper reporter.

Bill Temple

smoke-free

Cigarettes were Bill Temple’s constant companion for 48 years. When his story appeared in the paper last September, Temple hadn’t lighted up for three years and he had taken up exercise after suffering a heart attack a month after quitting smoking.

The good news?

The Sandpoint man is still smoke-free.

He did undergo surgery for prostate cancer last fall but says he is healthy now.

“I try to walk every day and ride my bike,” Temple says.

As for smoking, he says, “occasionally I get a strong urge.”

“There’s times when you’d just like to have a cigarette,” he says. “You know it’ll go away within the next five or 10 seconds.”

Nate Raver

cancer-free

When Nate Raver was profiled in the paper last March, the Spokane 12-year-old and his family were headed to Hawaii to celebrate his successful treatment and recovery from bone cancer.

But when they got back, a scan turned up bad news.

“On the MRI, it looked like cancer again,” his mom, Christal Raver, says. “They told us they were going to amputate immediately.”

But a biopsy revealed that Raver actually only had a stress fracture. And the most recent scans show he remains cancer-free.

In September, he will need surgery to stunt the growth of his leg that was not affected by cancer. Since the growth plate in his leg was destroyed during cancer treatment, doctors do not want his legs to be lopsided.

“He’s going to be a little bit shorter,” his mom says.

He’s still playing the guitar. And, for now, he’s still using crutches to get around. But his mom hopes he’ll be done with those later this year.

“And then we’re going to have a burning party,” she says.