“If there’s ever anyone who deserves a kidney, it’s Doug Lack!”
The woman, who had seen me leave Holliston High School after my interview with the visual arts teacher who leads the Fine and Performing Arts Department at the school went out of her way to capture my attention as I headed to my vehicle. She and others at the school knew well that Doug needed a kidney and that I was there to interview him for a humbling story. In the past six years, he’d appealed to the public two other times for a donor at the behest of his health care providers. Although one was found the first time, Doug had luckily been able to stave off needing the donation at that time, but he then later found out that his match had developed health problems of her own. The second entreaty resulted in a number of local folks coming forth to get tested, but none yielded results.
Hopefully, the third time’s a charm.
“I did have a match,” says Lack, who says a number of people had stepped forward to be tested, “but then she herself had some health issues.” Although he’s on a list for a cadaver donor, “a living donor would be the most beneficial situation,” he says.
“Doug Lack has been an institution in this school,” said faculty member Terry Caccavale, the woman who’d spoke enthusiastically on Mr. Lack’s behalf. “His reputation precedes him, and he’s built the program to the masterpiece level,” she said. Lack, who was named Massachusetts Art Education Association Educator of the Year in 2006, has even helped raised money for other faculty members who faced health problems. “He so deserves this,” says Caccavele, of the Medway resident and Holliston teacher since 1998.
Lack will need a kidney soon.
“I’m right on the cusp. I’m able to function right now,” says Lack.
Doug’s journey began with flu-like and arthritic symptoms, which later turned into trouble breathing and a 3-month hospitalized skirt with death in 1992. Doctors eventually arrived at a diagnosis of Granulomatosis with polyaniitis, a rare disorder that causes inflammation of the blood vessels in Lack’s nose, sinuses, throat, lungs and kidneys. Once out of the hospital, Lack changed his career course to teaching.
“I decided I needed to do something more important,” says Lack. “I felt like I had a second chance, a new lease on life.” Lack still had to undergo chemotherapy and steroid treatment, the latter of which caused Avascular Necrosis and resulted in his hips needing to be replaced. Teaching, however, has “been the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done,” he says. “I feel like Holliston is really my home town.”
The town has come to his aid more than once, and, significantly, one man, Carl Damigella, stepped up because, he, too, was once in Doug Lack’s position. Carl, who ran C&R Hot Dogs at the time, ran a Dogs for Doug campaign, that, combined with donations from Fiske’s and the Holliston Lions Club, amounted to a fund of about $1,000 to help Lack with expenses, a fund Doug is still is grateful to have if he finds a donor.
“The stars have to align for it to happen,” says Damigella, who received a donation of a kidney from a living donor back in 2006.
“I had an altruistic donor,” says Damigella, a diabetic whose own need had been publicized by Holliston writer Mary Greendale. “He was a firefighter on the Ashland Fire Department, and he just stepped forward and wanted to give me one of his kidneys … I did not meet him until after the surgery was done.” According to core.org, over 6,000 are living donors each year, one in four of whom are not biologically related to the recipient. Carl’s two children were both considered, but could not donate.
Before the transplant, Damigella was living with dialysis treatment, something Lack has not had to endure, yet.
“It is very traumatic, not the most comfortable thing in the world,” says Damigella. “I had to do it three times a week, even on vacation. There were some days I felt, ‘I’m not going today.’”
Damigella, too, explains that he feels he has a “second chance at life. I’ve had a kidney for 10 years, and everything (knocks wood) has been excellent,” says Damigella. He hopes Doug Lack will have that same opportunity.
Core.org explains that only a few illnesses would prevent someone from being a living donor.
If you are interested in being tested as a donor for Doug Lack, visit www.bidmc.org/transplant. Access the online donor screening tool in the blue box about ¾ down on the main page. If you do not have access to a computer, you can call Tracy Brann Darling, RN, BSN, CCTC at the BIDMC Transplant Institute, 110 Francis Street, 7th Floor, Boston, MA 02215. She can be reached at (617) 632-9851.
For questions and answers regarding being a LIVING DONOR, visit http://www.americantransplantfoundation.org/…/five-questio…/
Issue Date:
October, 2016
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