On the last day of August in 1980, Marcia Burke woke up in the intensive care unit at University Hospitals in Cleveland and smiled. She had undergone a kidney transplant after two decades of illness. "When I opened my eyes, I knew something was different. I was going to be healthy now," says Marcia. "I went home after the transplant and did things I only dreamt about, like going to a restaurant and eating a normal meal. Simple things."
Many of life's simple pleasures had been denied to Marcia since she was a sixth grader living in rural Ohio. "I would come home from school and my ankles would swell," recalls Marcia. "A month or two later, I'd wake up and my eyes would be puffy." Her doctor diagnosed a kidney problem, and the young girl was placed on complete bed rest for a year.
But Marcia's condition continued to deteriorate. Her parents took her to University Hospitals, where Marcia was told she had childhood nephrosis, a degenerative kidney disease. Physicians said she would probably die and placed her on high doses of steroids to slow the disease. For the next six years, Marcia defied medical predictions, though her life barely resembled that of a typical teenager.
The determined young woman graduated from high school in 1967, attended college and got married in 1971. All along her symptoms persisted. "I had a feeling that everyday was getting tougher to get through," says Marcia, who was tired, swollen and anemic. "Then I woke up one morning in 1973 and couldn't see. The toxins had built up so much that I went blind. I was hysterical." She was placed on emergency dialysis. It was the start of a three-day-a-week dialysis regiment that Marcia would withstand for seven years.
During that time, she got pregnant. Marcia, who was told she would never have children, was thrilled. Unfortunately, the demands of dialysis and her condition were too much: She gave birth prematurely to a son, who died just two weeks later. Doctors recommended a kidney transplant. "When they said that was my only chance of having a child, I was willing to do it," says Marcia.
She was placed on the organ waiting list in January 1980. In August, a 16-year-old boy in Youngstown died in a motorcycle accident, and Marcia received one of his kidneys. Two years after the transplant, Marcia got pregnant. She had a miscarriage and later lost two more babies. But in November 1984, Marcia gave birth to a healthy daughter, Bridget. Five years later, she had a son, Trevor.
Today, Marcia volunteers for LifeBanc, northeast Ohio's organ procurement and tissue recovery agency. She shares her story with middle and high school students, educating them about organ donation. "There are more than 100,000 people in this country waiting for organs that won't be here if everyone decides not to donate," says Marcia. Her daughter also joined the cause, starting an Organ and Tissue Club at American University in Washington, D.C., before she graduated last spring.
Marcia's own gratitude is tremendous. "Because of the transplant, I was able to have my daughter and son," she says. "When they have children, it will all be because of a 16-year-old boy whose family considered organ donation. When my grandchildren have children, it will be because of that 16-year-old. The gift will never end. It will go from generation to generation."
Currently, nearly 100,000 men, women and children in the United States and thousands in Ohio are waiting for a life-saving transplant. You can become a registered organ donor right now or by saying “yes” when renewing your driver license or state ID at the BMV.