Man Finally Finds Kidney Transplant Match, Then Hospital Makes Its Sick Move
Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, tyrannical figures pushing mandates and restrictions have insisted those measures are necessary to protect people’s health. However, their actions have repeatedly proven they are indifferent to the health of anyone who dares to disagree.
In the latest example of this phenomenon, a medical center in Ohio may deny one man’s kidney transplant because the donor is not vaccinated.
According to WEWS-TV, Eastlake, Ohio, native Mike Ganim was first diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease about 25 years ago. Since then, his health has fluctuated without becoming too threatening.
But in March 2020, his condition quickly began to deteriorate. Ganim was sent to the hospital with a large blood clot, and doctors discovered the extent of his condition.
“The kidneys were so profound with cysts that they just pressed and pressed and pressed on his main vein and it bottlenecked it and it went all the way down into his leg,” Ganim’s wife, Debi, said.
While doctors at the Cleveland Clinic quickly determined his need for a kidney transplant, the process proved to be long and difficult. He was finally added to the donor list in October 2020.
In May, a cousin offered to be a donor, but he was not a match for Ganim. After that, Debi Ganim decided to make her husband’s need public on social media.
“He’s only going to be 52. And, you know, he should have a lot of years left, and we had 119 shares that week,” she told WEWS.
In a heart-warming development, a friend of hers decided to give blood after seeing the post. Susan George knew Debi Ganim because Ganim was her daughter’s third-grade teacher.
“When I saw her posts on social media, that her husband needed this kidney, and knowing they ask for nothing from anybody, I immediately went to the computer and signed up to give blood,” George said. “They had matched our blood and mixed our blood together and it was a match.”
After further tests confirmed the match, the Cleveland Clinic scheduled the transplant for Oct. 13. Yet on Oct. 8, it informed the Ganims the operation was being put on hold because George is unvaccinated.
Mike Ganim himself is vaccinated, and George, who is unvaccinated for religious and medical reasons, said the doctors have known her vaccination status for months.
“It was never an issue, and not one doctor out of those doctors we’ve met with mentioned that it was an issue except for the pulmonary doctor who just tried to persuade me to get the shot and that was about a month ago,” George said.
Nonetheless, the Cleveland Clinic is not letting the transplant go through as of this point. Debi Ganim said the decision did not come from the local hospital but rather from the higher-ups in the organization.
“They called Mike and they said how sorry they are,” she said. “The surgeons are devastated that this is a decision that came from the high up.”
According to WEWS, the Cleveland Clinic did not announce its policy that both parties in a transplant must be vaccinated until last week, well after this transplant was scheduled. While the clinic said in a statement that the vaccination deadline for a patient looking for a deceased donor was Nov. 1, it did not specify a date by which living donors had to be vaccinated.
Debi Ganim said at the very least, there should be a grace period for surgeries scheduled before the policy was put in place. While she said her husband’s team is working to find a solution, she fears time is of the essence.
“I feel like, if they don’t come up with a solution, what’s going to happen if they wait another week and another week then we lose everything,” she said.
“The health and safety of our patients is our top priority,” Cleveland Clinic said in a statement to WEWS. “Cleveland Clinic has recently developed safety protocols for solid organ transplantation that require COVID-19 vaccination to be an active transplant candidate or living donor. Vaccination is particularly important in these patients for their safety.
“For the living donor, preventing COVID-19 infection around the time of a surgical operation is crucial. For the transplant candidate, in addition to a major operation, medications taken after an organ transplant weaken a person’s immune response. Serious complications of COVID-19 are most likely to develop in those individuals who have weakened immune systems, as their body has a reduced ability to fight and recover from infections. The FDA-authorized vaccines have been determined to be safe and effective and are the best way to prevent severe illness and death from COVID-19.”
There is an obvious flaw to this line of reasoning, which George pointed out.
“They’re putting this vaccination ahead of saving somebody’s life,” she said. “I’m willing to give a body part, a kidney to this man. And they are not going to do it because I’m not taking a shot.
“That makes no sense.”
Mike Ganim’s life is quite literally in danger due to his condition. By contrast, the clinic is more concerned with a virus that has a 1.6 percent case mortality rate in the United States, according to Johns Hopkins University.
There is no logical way in which to argue that the clinic is valuing Ganim’s health in this situation. That is because the propensity to push vaccine mandates has little to do with health and everything to do with control.
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