The Bruhn family shares the Daisy Chain kidney transplant journey
What are your options when you need a kidney and you can’t find a match? An extraordinary medical process – known as ‘the Daisy Chain’ – is giving hope to thousands of Australians.
Leanne Bruhn will one day write a letter to the person who gifted her a second chance at life. It’ll be anonymous – she will never know the name of her organ donor, and they will never know hers – but heartfelt.
For now, finding the words for that letter to express her gratitude is hard, she says. Before kidney disease put her life on hold, Leanne and her husband Steve, who celebrate their 43rd wedding anniversary this year, loved to spend weekends at the MCG barracking for their beloved Richmond Tigers, or at Flemington or Caulfield cheering on the dozen racehorses they own five per cent shares in, or spending time with their two young grandsons.
The kidney transplant has gifted Leanne a second chance at this life, and for now, she can’t write the letter because her gratitude veers not to words but to touch: she wants to give her donor a great big hug. “I know I’ll never be able to do that,” the 62-year-old acknowledges. But she hugs Steve, because without him none of this would have happened. Steve donated one of his kidneys to a stranger, you see, in order that Leanne would get her new kidney from someone else.
The couple had their operations on the same day late last year at Monash Medical Centre in Melbourne. Two other people in the operating theatre that day also owe their lives to organ donations. One was photographer Andrew Chapman, who documented the Bruhns’ operations for his new exhibition, The Daisy Chain. Chapman, 71, suffers from haemochromatosis and was close to death from liver failure in 2011 when fate delivered him a transplant from a deceased donor. A decade later his daughter Sarah, then aged 38, donated one of her kidneys to him after his own packed up. “You don’t expect to be borrowing an organ from your child,” Chapman says of his second transplant. “It was a difficult decision, as you can imagine, but the whole family wanted to do it. And it means I’m getting to see my four grandkids grow up, which brings me so much joy.” His exhibition is timed to coincide with DonateLife Week, which kicks off tomorrow.
The “Daisy Chain” is Chapman’s colloquial description of a great medical-logistical feat the Bruhns were a part of. Nine donor/recipient pairs across Australia and New Zealand were put together by Royal Melbourne Hospital’s Paired Kidney Exchange Program – “like a big mix ‘n’ match, to ensure every recipient got a good kidney”, Chapman explains. (Leanne couldn’t simply take Steve’s kidney – tests had revealed they weren’t a compatible match – and she’d been told to expect a five-year wait for a deceased donor kidney. So they, and eight other donor/recipient pairs in the same boat, were matched up in the Daisy Chain.)
In Chapman’s images, you see the frontline medical team involved in both of the Bruhns’ operations: the three surgeons, two anaesthetists, three nurses and a theatre technician. What you don’t see are all the other experts, from nephrologists and dialysis nurses to psychologists and couriers, who played their part behind the scenes in the Bruhns’ story. And multiply all that nine-fold, across two countries, to get an idea of the scale of the logistical challenge involved in the Daisy Chain. It’s thanks to the team of highly trained nurses known as “transplant co-ordinators” that the whole thing ran smoothly.
Dr David Soon was the primary surgeon (though he was supervised by a Consultant) for the Bruhns. The 34-year-old from Melbourne, who has since moved to the UK with his young family to broaden his surgical experience, expects to step up to a Consultant position when he returns to Australia next year. Soon has performed 200-odd kidney transplants, and says the procedure is “technically one of the simplest transplants to perform, though of course it’s still a major operation”.
Each of the Bruhns’ operations took several hours. “Steve went in first, at 8am,” Leanne says. “Shortly before I went in for my mine at 2pm I was told he’d come through it and was in recovery. It was a huge relief to know he was OK.”
Incidentally, if you’re wondering about the other person in the operating theatre at Monash Medical Centre that day who owes their life to an organ donation – that’s Soon. As a 22-year-old medical student with congenital kidney disease, he refused to go on dialysis (“typically stubborn!” he says), so his big sister Elaine volunteered to donate one of her kidneys to him. “I owe her a lot,” Soon says, adding with a laugh: “And she never lets me forget it!”
Leanne lived with the energy-sapping effects of failing kidney function for 30 years; it started when she was a young mum, but progressed slowly until 2023 when it suddenly started failing fast. Since the transplant late last year the retired receptionist has recovered well at home in Berwick. Every week, she feels more energetic; she has recently taken up Pilates. Steve, 64, has a few more years of work in the insurance game before he joins her in retirement.
For now, the couple – who met at the trots in Mount Gambier in their teens – are happy to be back spending their weekends watching the Tigers at the MCG, cheering on their racehorses at Flemington and Caulfield, and hanging out with their two grandsons, aged 11 and nine. “Watching them grow up,” Leanne says. Next year she and Steve are looking forward to resuming their overseas travels, starting with an Antarctic cruise.
“When it came to donating, I didn’t hesitate,” Steve says matter-of-factly. “It’s just what you do for someone you love. By being part of the Daisy Chain I’ve been able to continue my life with Leanne, and also help another person – someone, somewhere is much better off for having my kidney. I don’t know who that person is, and to be honest I don’t think much about it. All I was told is that their transplant was a success, and that’s all I need to know.”
As for Leanne, well, she thinks about her donor. “Sometimes, when I’m lying in bed awake at night, I do wonder. I wonder about that person. Are they a parent, a sibling, or a friend of the transplant recipient they paired with in the Daisy Chain? I wonder who they are, and what their situation in life is. And I think, ‘I hope they don’t get sick now they’ve given away one of their kidneys...’ All those things go through your mind.”
The letter she will write, one day soon, will be passed on to her donor – with strict two-way anonymity – by the Australian & New Zealand Paired Kidney Exchange Program. How to find the words to express the depths of her gratitude, to someone she’ll never know, and who’ll never know her? “I’m still working on that,” Leanne says warmly. “I need to find the right words.” But she knows what she’ll open with. “Thank you for the second chance at life.”
donatelife.gov.au; The Daisy Chain is exhibited at Melbourne’s Magnet Galleries
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