Ex-patients to play in national sport event

[Note: this story has been modified since its original posting.]

Jim Campbell has always been athletic. He started surfing, racing motorcycles and playing racquetball in his 20s. But after being diagnosed with Alport’s syndrome, a hereditary condition that causes progressive kidney damage, Campbell underwent a kidney transplant in 1974.

A year later, Campbell beat his transplant surgeon in a racquetball match, and he continues to improve his game by playing two or three times a week at the MU Student Recreation Center.

On Tuesday, Campbell will take his game on the road and compete in singles racquetball against other transplant patients at the 2006 Transplant Games in Louisville, Ky. The games open Friday and continue through Wednesday.

Campbell, an MU associate professor of family and community medicine, will join two other Columbians who have had kidney transplants: Norma Knowles and Eric Sherron.

Sherron is making his first trip to the games, and he plans to compete in the 100-meter run, 200-meter run, 50-meter freestyle swim, 50-meter breaststroke and volleyball.

Knowles, who has participated in four Transplant Games, will compete in bowling.

This year marks Campbell’s third appearance at the games. His wife, Anne Campbell, will march in the opening ceremonies because she’s an organ donor. When Jim Campbell needed a second kidney transplant in June 2003, she donated hers.

“I can remember the physician coming in and telling me that it looked like this kidney is not going to keep going much longer,” Jim Campbell said. “I was just sitting on the exam table, and my wife said, ‘I want to be tested to be a donor.’”

As of Wednesday, 54 people were on University Hospital’s waiting list for a kidney transplant. There are 2,065 people waiting for vital organs in Missouri, and 92,230 nationally, according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network.

The Transplant Games, held for the first time in 1990, is sponsored by the National Kidney Foundation. It is not a fundraiser, but rather an opportunity for camaraderie among those who have had transplants and a chance to thank donors and families of deceased donors. The event is also designed to raise awareness about the need for transplant donors and demonstrate the success of organ transplantation.

“For the most part,” Jim Campbell said, “people go there just to celebrate the fact that you can remain vertical.”