It’s a first for the doctor who performed the latest transplant: “This is the first time a husband and wife donated to another husband and wife.”
Some gifts are timely. Others, timeless.The gift of living.Christine, suffering from a debilitating genetic disorder, received Debbie’s left kidney in June 2015. Best friends since their school days at Webber Elementary in Westminster, Debbie didn’t hesitate to help Christine.
For the surgeon who handled Ron’s transplant, Dr. Tsuyoshi Todo, the Thompson-Morales organ donations stand out as unique in his more than seven years at Cedars.Their lives have harmonized for decades. All four are 62, and each couple has three boys and a girl, who range in age from 38 to 30. They grew up and went to school in neighboring Westminster and Garden Grove.
Youngest child Kayli Morales bustled at the stove, baking treats and prepping for the tamale-making that night. Her father’s illness had been particularly tough the past two years, emotionally and financially, with the main breadwinner’s construction work disrupted by his kidney problems and his medical care by the coronavirus pandemic.Christine Morales and Debbie Thompson cheering at Westminster High School in 1977.
Debbie couldn’t put her finger on what it was that made them so inseparable. But they lived a short walk away from each other’s homes, often sleeping over. Debbie remembers going on vacations with the Christine’s family.Christine, who has two sisters, recalled how much she also wanted to be a sister to Debbie, who came from a family of five.They grew even closer in high school, adding “Ronnie,” as they called Ron back then, to the friendship when they were sophomores.
The Moraleses moved to Riverside for 11 years. The two young moms remained close through phone conversations and occasional get-togethers. When the Morales family returned to Orange County and settled in Huntington Beach, they were a much closer drive to the Thompsons in Garden Grove. But in 2014, her grace period ran out. She couldn’t keep how dire her illness was from her best friend any longer. Christine was overly tired, her body swelling up, and her blood pressure was “out of whack.” Debbie could see it.
Her operation a month later at Cedars-Sinai began at 6 a.m. and ended at midnight. Christine underwent two surgeries: one for the transplant and a second to regraft a vein from her leg to her new kidney because of a blood clot. By 2020, the diabetes forced him to retire. There was financial stress, and then, worse, the sudden news he was in renal failure. At the start of the lockdown from the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, Ron was told to get to the emergency room during a Zoom call with his doctor.Christine had to leave him at the ER, alone.
“She was fine after she did it, so I didn’t worry too much about it or think too much about it,” Brad said.
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