SEATTLE — Kidney patient Dorothy Beaver and kidney transplant surgeon Dr. Ramasamy Bakthavatsalam were both snowed in when the telephone call came.
They were told they had to get to the University of Washington Medical Center in time for the operation. The time frame was only a couple of hours.
After four years of dialysis, the 49-year-old Beaver was more than ready to go no matter how icy and slippery it was outside. That’s four years of dialysis at four hours a day, three times a week.
“I was so excited, I was running around my apartment,” she told a Seattle newspaper.
But it wasn’t going to be easy to get transported from her snowbound apartment in SeaTac.
Her foster sister and caregiver was snowed in across town near Northgate in Seattle. And HopeLink, which normally transported her to dialysis, was handling emergencies only.
Meanwhile, Bakthavatsalam was snowed in in Kirkland.
The hospital turned out to be the real hero, dispatching staff to go get the patient and the doctor.
“I was delighted to do it,” said Walter Thurnhofer, the medical center’s senior director of support services. “She said she was so tired of dialysis, that this was the best Christmas present.”
Meanwhile, interim medical director Dr. Tom Staiger went to Kirkland to pick up the surgeon.
Both the patient and the physician made it to the hospital on time.
Beaver got her new kidney Monday morning.
“I just want to thank the family that donated the kidney,” she said. “This is going to let me be more active with my (six) grandchildren. “I already feel better.”
Beaver wasn’t the exception. Her kidney transplant was one of dozens of medical operations that continued despite Seattle’s traffic-snarling snowfall.
Hospital administrators say Harborview Medical Center and UWMC remained nearly fully staffed, largely because of the efforts employees made to get to work.
Almaz Bekele, a hospital assistant at the UW, left her house in Madrona at dawn for her shift, which started at 11 a.m. Monday. When no buses showed up, she walked the four miles and made it to work on time.
“She told me that she couldn’t call in sick because she wasn’t,” said Eileen Suver, assistant nurse manager on Bekele’s floor.
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