By Jill Fennema –

Everyone wants to give the perfect Christmas gift. Something needed. Something memorable. Something to make the recipient feel that they were worth the effort.  That’s a tall order and often our expectations fall short. 

But for Keith Groen, he received a gift like no other. A gift that will literally keep him alive. 

On Wednesday, November 18, Barb Van’t Hof of Leota donated one of her kidneys to Keith, her husband Al’s uncle. 

Let’s start at the beginning. 

In 2008, Keith had his annual physical. He’s a truck driver by trade, so annual checkups are a legal requirement for his license. His blood pressure was high. His doctor put him on a blood pressure medication. At that time, Keith should have been told to come back in a few weeks for a blood test to make sure that the medication was not having any adverse affects. But no one mentioned that to him.

A year later, at his next physical, his doctor found that his creatinine levels were high. That was the start of his kidney disease. His doctor put him on a different kind of blood pressure medication, hoping to bring that creatinine level down. But the damage had been done.

Then they discovered some cancer on his right kidney. He had surgery to have the lower one-third of his right kidney removed.  At that time, both of his kidneys were biopsied, and they found that both of them were scarred. 

Keith started seeing a nephrologist – a kidney doctor named Dr. Max Fischer. He monitored Keith’s kidneys for the next 11 years. Donna watched his diet. Keith gave up eating potatoes and a number of other things that were his favorites and forced himself to drink more fluids, especially water.

In July of 2018, he had some problems with his liver, which accelerated his kidney problems. In March 2019, they did a biopsy of his liver. They went through his blood vessel from his neck down into his liver to get a piece of liver tissue to test. 

About five days later he was in severe pain and had to go to the hospital in an ambulance. Keith spent eight days in the hospital and had to be put under anesthesia three times. First they cleaned out the blood clots, but the bleeding continued. So in the second surgery, the doctor cauterized the bleeding, but then found out that the bile duct was plugged again. So they had to go in a third time to clean that out. Then he had to have a blood transfusion.

By November 2018, Keith’s name was on the kidney transplant list. His kidney function had fallen to 14 or 15 percent, which is low enough to make the threshold to get on the list.

Keith’s wife Donna started to notify family and friends that Keith desperately needed a new kidney. Their best option was to find a live donor that was related by blood.

In May 2019, Keith’s sister, Bertha Van’t Hof, gave a letter to local friends and family and members of her church in Leota. Bertha’s son, Al and wife Barb, read the letter and while they did not talk about it a lot at the time, they both thought that it was such a blessing that Keith comes from such a large family – he is the 13th of 15 children born to Klaas and Alice Groen. 

For the complete article, please see the December 23rd edition of the Edgerton Enterprise. If you do not currently receive the Enterprise, CLICK HERE for information on how to subscribe!