City hosts Transplant Games ’08

The Cleveland Clinic Transplant Center, where Michael Natale received his kidney, told him he… The Cleveland Clinic Transplant Center, where Michael Natale received his kidney, told him he could contact his donor one year after the operation.

“I started calling last July, and she wouldn’t answer my calls!” joked Natale, introducing his donor – and sister – “Ju-Ju” Delillo beside him at the U.S. Transplant Games in the David Lawrence Convention Center Saturday.

“Now she’ll call and ask to speak to her kidney.”

“I miss it,” Delillo quipped.

The Games has taken place every other year since 1990, making this the 10th year of competition. In its first year in Pittsburgh, the Games was sponsored by the National Kidney Foundation and meant to celebrate the life and vitality of transplant recipients, honor their donors, family and friends and encourage the public to consider the merits of organ donation.

The four-day Olympic-style event kicked off Friday morning with a colorful registration and all-day games expo.

Each of the 32 national and international teams wore signature color T-shirts, pins and, in the case of Team Oklahoma, American Indian headdresses to show their solidarity and introduce themselves to the other teams.

“Look at this,” said Angeline “Kula” Goughnour, a heart transplant recipient, as she pointed to the pin-laden lanyard draped around her neck. Organizers gave the participants pins for exchanging to help facilitate conversation.

“I didn’t even want to do the pins – I thought they were a little kitschy – but it gets into your blood. You make so many new friends,” she said.

With the exception of the popular and elusive alien pin from New Mexico, a crab pin from Maryland and a few others, Goughnour amassed nearly a complete set.

But her favorites, a peach and a live oak tree from Team Georgia, she pinned near her left shoulder, hanging like a plum line from the lanyard to the heart she received two years ago from a young woman in Atlanta.

“I was just so blessed,” said Goughnour.

Monica Herr, a senior and urban studies/political science major at Pitt, volunteered at the expo and saw firsthand what the event meant for the attendees.

“I had never heard of [the Games] before, but a friend of mine works at UPMC and told me about it,” said Herr.

“Everybody’s so wonderful. They’re out switching pins, communicating. It’s great. And the Hawaii people?” said Herr, picking up the lei around her neck, “These are real, and they brought them all the way here to give out.”

Pittsburgh, thanks to the innovations of Dr. Thomas Starzl and his colleagues who performed the first liver transplant at UPMC in 1981, has long been a leader in transplant surgery.

According to UPMC’s Transplantation Services Web site, “more than 12,000 transplants have been performed at UPMC Presbyterian and Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, distinguishing UPMC as the largest transplant center in the world.”

This year’s Team Pittsburgh was comprised of 125 athletes who received a life-saving kidney, liver, heart, lung, pancreas or bone marrow transplant,18 donor families, 17 living donors and 12 transplant supporters.

Athletes competed in swimming, racquetball, table tennis, basketball, golf, bowling, track and field, badminton and a 5-kilometer run/walk.

“It’s more about camaraderie than competition,” said Natale. “We sat with some of the athletes from Team Philadelphia at the Pirates game last night, and we schmoozed the whole time.”

Wayne Meyers, a Team Pittsburgh athlete who received a heart transplant in 2004, said, “When you see these people, and you know they were so sick for so long, and now they’re better and they’re here – it’s just a great feeling.”