Imagine: you're 23 years old, ready to start the next chapter of your life in a new city thousands of miles away from home and then you get horrible news.
The news? Your kidneys are failing and you're just a few weeks away from graduating and moving.
That's what happened to Alejandro Hortet as he was preparing to graduate and move to Motown.
"Back in April, I was having some difficulties eating." Hortet said. "I figured it was just the flu or something."
It wasn't that at all. "I was also trying to donate blood. I was trying to just do something good," he said.
You see, Alejandro came to the United States as a foreign exchange student. That was 8 years ago. Then he was 15, had a host family, learned to make new friends and then decided to stay in Boise, Idaho to attend Boise State.
While inside the blood donation center, they told him he couldn't donate blood. They urged him to go visit the student doctor on campus at Boise State. He did.
"She looked at me. She thought I had something in my heart because she heard an irregular beat so she sent a couple of tests," Alejandro said.
The doctor on duty urged him to come back in the afternoon but it didn't take long. Doctors were alarmed at something. Something wasn't right.
"An hour later, I get a phone call saying that I needed to come in right away with a friend."
Immediately Alejandro got nervous. To put this in perspective, all he had was a close group of friends from Columbia, South America. That's where his immediate family was and had been while he went to high school and worked on his engineering degree. He got a friend to go with him and it took little time for him to get put in a room and for the physician to come in. He got the news no one at the age of 23 ever wants to hear.
Alejandro told me the doctor said, "This is kidney failure, a hundred percent." The doctor, he said, didn't stop. They hit home the urgency of the problem.
"We already talked with the hospital, St. Luke's. They already have a room ready for you and your friend has to drive you to the hospital."
Alejandro's mom and dad were in Columbia, South America. For a moment, life stopped.
As it stood, Alejandro was just weeks from graduating. He was preparing to move to Detroit to work fulltime for a major auto supplier and start a new life. He was and still is part of Detroit's resurgence.
Alejandro shared with me his thoughts when he got the news. You could say it's a feeling many people share. That feeling of invincibility.
"When you're growing up, you're always thinking your body is perfect and you're immune to everything and then all of the sudden they break the news you need a new organ because yours are failing," he said.
As time went on, he would take to Facebook. For many, it's an outlet, a means by which people express themselves to their friends and others on their friends list and for Alejandro it was much the same. He posted a status update about where he was in life and the curve ball that had been thrown his way. How he was coping and what his next steps were before moving on. One of his friends, James Boyette had attended high school with him and even started their college careers off together before James had to take a break.
James tells me without hesitation he offered up one of his kidneys to Alejandro. He knew the surgery wouldn't be easy, that's before he learned a robot would be doing it and he knew that being a universal blood type, he could donate with fewer complications than most have.
"It came down to if he needs anything, let me know even if it's my kidney, let me know," James said.
James had known Alejandro since he came to the U.S. 8 years ago and knew he was the kind of guy that would do anything for anyone.
"It just came down to if there is something I can do than why shouldn't I do something," James said.
James tells me he didn't realize the wait list was as long as it was. According to the website Organdonor.gov, there are more than 119,000 men, women and children on the national organ transplant waiting list. Of them, more than 80 percent are waiting on a kidney. On average, most will wait a minimum of 3 to 5 years and go on dialysis before finding a successful donor.
James immediately started the process to donate one of his kidneys. It's a process that takes months. He became the subject of repeated tests, blood draws and interviews to discuss the process and how he was feeling throughout the process.
James flew into Detroit on several occasions and met with the staff at Henry Ford Hospital. Dr. Atsushi Yoshida is the Surgical Director of Liver Transplantation and the Associate Director for the Division of Transplant Surgery for Henry Ford Health System. He says a new robot is helping advance the power of medicine and helping patients going under for surgery. "The key thing for us and the robot is that we don't have to strain ourselves," Dr. Yoshida said.
"With the robot we don't have to worry about that. We can just go ahead put the kidney in and we sit in a normal comfortable and using the robot we can do the operation in a nice, gentle, relaxed fashion," Dr. Yoshida said.
"Doctors who sit at the controls practice on a series of video game style simulations that use 3-D where surgeons are able to sew things together, can learn how to move the instruments very easily and it makes a big difference," Dr. Yoshida said about those surgeons sitting behind the controls of the newest member of the surgical team. The Da Vinci robot is helping not only patients but also the surgeons.
"We've done minimally invasive for the donor part of the operation for quite sometime," Dr. Yoshida said. "But with the robot we're changing the whole dynamic of an operation that would give you a big incision lots of wound infections, lots of problems with the wounds in general to a small incision where people can go home in theory almost the next day."
Dr. Yoshida tells Action News there are only about four places in the country that do robotic kidney transplants. Henry Ford Health System, the doctor says, is one of the more aggressive one's and they're doing their best to promote it more and more.
James tells me he knew he was making the right decision after seeing his father with whom he's had a strained relationship. He says he went to visit his grandmother and told her the news. She called his dad over. He hadn't spoken to his father in years prior to this encounter at his grandma's house. He says while it was good to see his father, it was extremely emotional. His father gave him advice he said will always stick with him, he said his dad told him, "Life comes down to a few basic options. Either you do something or you don't and more often than not, we regret the things we don't do and sometimes those regrets have impacts on other people," James said.
"Between my parents, we call him my angel. Because if you think about it, there's no way for me to ever repay him," Alejandro told me.
"What he's doing for me, I think about it, he's giving me life."
For more information on organ donation visit: http://www.organdonor.gov
For more information on organ donation you can also visit: http://www.donatelife.net
For more information on the Da Vinci and Henry Ford Health System you can visit: http://www.henryford.com
If you have questions for Alejandro or James feel free to e-mail me, Nima@WXYZ.COM.
See the special report Monday on 7 Action News at 11 pm.
