Lupus meant woman no 'supermom'

"I'm ready," Roxanne Boyd Williams says with a smile as nurses wheel her gurney toward the operating room. She's been counting the days, anxious to end the dialysis that leaves her too drained to provide much care for her 2-year-old twins and 7-month-old.

Williams was in college when lupus struck, rapidly destroying her kidneys. A kidney from her sister survived treatment for post-transplant cancer, a blood-clotting disorder and the twins' birth, only to fail with her second pregnancy.

"I'd like to be super-mom for once," Williams says wistfully. "To really tell my kids, 'I'm here for you, I'm not sick, we'll go to the museum, we'll go to the park.'"

Back in Missouri, Irene Otten's kidneys failed with no warning a year ago. Otten, now 40, went to the emergency room because of a racing heartbeat only to learn she needed immediate dialysis. Doctors couldn't explain why; her only known risk was some high blood pressure.

Despair hit with news that the average five-year wait for a kidney is far longer for "sensitized" patients, with those hyped-up kidney-attacking antibodies. Her husband and 16-year-old have "been praying me through this," she says softly.

Then an aunt saw a news story about Melancon's work with the blood-filtering treatment, and Tom Otten tracked him down.

Now, it's Dec 4 and as Roxanne Williams goes under anesthesia, across the hallway Melancon already is snipping tissue, millimeter by millimeter, to extract Tom Otten's kidney.

Working laparoscopically - through two tiny holes, guided by cameras - Melancon gently lifts Otten's spleen out of the way. He winds around nearby organs and glands, like easing the kidney out of a shell.

It takes about half an hour longer to extract a man's kidney than a woman's, he notes. Tissue encasing it is thicker, more fibrous.

Three hours in, Melancon pauses, his blade near the ureter, the tube that carries urine from the kidney to the bladder.

"This is the point of no return. Ask if everything's fine next door," he tells a nurse. Reassured, he rapidly makes the final cuts and wiggles the kidney through a 10-centimeter incision low on Otten's abdomen.

"It's a beautiful kidney," Melancon exclaims, laying it in a bucket of ice and heading for Williams' operating room.

(Edit:Ruby)