Cheryl Green survives 37 years with mother's kidney

Cheryl Green, now 58, has survived 37 years after receiving a kidney transplant in which her mother was the donor.

In 1975, Green was a 19-year-old Penn State student when she suffered a cardiac arrest after her kidneys failed. She made it to the hospital in time, and after two years working with doctors and undergoing dialysis, her mother Lorraine gave her own kidney for a kidney transplant.

Dr. Laurence E. Carroll, who serves with Green on the Kidney Foundation of Central Pennsylvania board of directors, says her outcome is unusual for 1970s-era transplants, when just half of donated kidneys still functioned one year later. Green is just as amazed at her remarkable outcome.

"I have an 88-year-old kidney in me," Green says today, according to Lancaster Online. "People said it wouldn't last."

Green, now working as a physician's assistant at Oyster Point Family Health Center in Lebanon, Va., believes that constant childhood strep infections caused her kidney failure.

At the time of her operation, kidney transplants were uncommon and doctors hesitant to use her mother as the donor (Lorraine was 51 at the time).

"They didn't know if they would use her, because they didn't like donors over 50," Green said.

But her mother turned out to be her only family match. And though two weeks after the kidney transplant at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania doctors thought that Green's body was rejecting the transplant, she has proved to be resilient.

"I was raised not to be a whiner and a complainer," she said. "Get it over with and make the best of it. I think that's part of what's kept me going all these years. ... I just keep going."

Green's mother passed away in 2012 at age 86, but Green still maintains her positive attitude.

"Mom and I were always close," Green said. "Then we got even closer (after the transplant)."

Green lives a healthy lifestyle, exercising and eating right, and has even competed in the Transplant Olympics.