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Show Page 6 AMERICAN FORK CITIZEN Thursday, May 1 2008 American Fork man celebrates the gift of life Ace Stryker DAILY HERALD There's no way to be sure, but Roy F. Jensen thinks it's him. . A 20-year-old newspaper clipping recounts in a few brief paragraphs the life and death of the man who might have saved Jensen. The obituary says he was 19. He was from Bountiful. And he died in a motorcycle crash virtually all that Jensen knows about the anonymous kidney donor, printed there in black and white. "It made me feel like I knew him, like I've known him for years," said Jensen, 54, sitting in his American Fork office two decades after the transplant. trans-plant. "I don't know how it was fair that I got to benefit from his death." Jensen will never know for sure the identity of the man who, through a tragedy of his own, gave him the chance to watch his kids grow up. All he has is a guess. But that has never discounted the gratitude he feels for the gift. "I still get a little choked up about it," he said, tears cumulating cu-mulating at the corners of his eyes. Bountiful donors Utah is one of the best states in the country for people in situations like Jensen's, said Intermountain Donor Services Educational Director Alex McDonald. Mc-Donald. "We have over 65 percent of the population signed up to be organ donors," he said. "We're actually leading the nation in that." Though not every organ is usable, Utahns have been impressively im-pressively generous with their willingness to donate, McDonald McDon-ald said. "At the time of death, when people are really making a decision, de-cision, typically, 90 percent of people have said yes," he said. "To have nine out of 10 people saying yes at the time of donation dona-tion is amazing." In the past five years, living donations have outpaced deceased de-ceased ones in Utah. Of the 160 kidney transplants that took place last year, 92 used organs from a live donor. That's good news especially espe-cially since the organ waiting list is currently 330 strong, with 160 of those patients needing need-ing kidneys, McDonald said. "I think that says a lot about people, that they are willing to step forward," he said. Signs of trouble Jensen was flying home in o o CRAIG DILGER Daily Herald Roy F. Jensen received a life saving kidney transplant twenty years ago. 1987 from a business trip to California when the nausea first hit. Sitting at the back of the airplane, he felt the quiet stirrings of the flu-like sickness that would rack his body for months. "I just started to feel rotten," he said. When the nausea and fatigue fa-tigue persisted, his wife urged him to visit a doctor. There, he was told that his blood pressure pres-sure was off the chart. Three weeks later, somebody from the University Hospital in Salt Lake City called to tell hirn he needed a new kidney. "It was total shock," he said. "I had not had any health problems my entire life. I was working out at the gym, I was swimming, I was running. I was in excellent physical shape." Jensen needed a second opinion to be sure. 1 le got no better news. So then came the first step of treatment: blood transfusions. "They did that to get my body used to having somewhat of a foreign substance," he said. Two of his sisters volunteered volun-teered to be donors, but doctors said neither could. One had a history of health problems, and the other simply wasn't a match. So Jensen was put on a waiting list. As the weeks and months wore on, he started dialysis at the Utah Valley Regional Re-gional Medical Center in Provo three times a week. "It was hell. It really was," he said. "They hook you up and you sit there and you're sick. Literally, your blood is being be-ing pulled out and put through a machine to filter it." Jensen said after each session, ses-sion, he would feel totally drained. Life at 34 was beginning begin-ning to feel more like life at 84. Jensen had been on the waiting wait-ing list for about six months when he was visiting a doctor doc-tor at the University Hospital about a new infection, one of many punishments his body had been enduring. The doctor doc-tor was paged away to the emergency room to deal with a trauma victim. As Jensen was leaving the hospital, a second page called him to the nurse's desk. "The nurse said, 'Stay on your antibiotics.' I didn't know what she meant," he said. Late that night, a phone call interrupted the quiet of the Jensen household. It was a hospital representative: Jensen had a match. Surprisingly, his reaction was mixed. "It hit me that somebody just died, and that because that person had died I was going to be able to go on," he said. "That really bothered me all night." But early the next morning, Jensen was in the operating room. Regulations then about donor-recipient communications communica-tions were stricter than they are now, but one young technician techni-cian whispered to Jensen as he took a blood sample that he knew the man who had died the day before. He was a friend. He had gone out motorcycling, but left his helmet behind in favor of working on a tan. One mishap later, and he was providing Jensen with the organ he so badly needed. "That made it harder," Jensen Jen-sen said. mim. i it w, 11 i monuments I . r tv.1.. ; -fr.l. o r..l 725 South 900 East Provo, ttah 374-0580 eeslev Monuments Let Us Insure Your Health and Life Insurance l ulA To clear the wav for smooth muotiations, sell ers might want to have their properties inspected prior to placing their homes on the market. That way, there are no surprises for anyone. The sellers can fully disclose any defects and choose either to have them repaired or negotiate the price of their repair re-pair with the buyer. 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