UUP retiree on mission for a friend

Sharon Kehoe had no idea when she went to the doctor for routine blood tests that she would walk away with a diagnosis of kidney failure. Less than two years later, Kehoe — a UUP member and an associate professor in the department of educational administration at SUNY Brockport — spends four hours a day, three times a week hooked up to a dialysis machine, waiting for a life-saving kidney transplant.

And now the man who hired her in 1985, William Rock, a SUNY Brockport distinguished service professor emeritus, has made it his mission to publicize Kehoe’s situation in hope that someone with the right blood type will step forward and offer her a kidney.

“She’s a colleague and a friend,” said Rock, now chair of UUP’s Western New York region of the Committee on Active Retired Membership. “And she was the first woman hired on the tenure track in our department. She’s a pioneer.”

Kehoe’s illness has forced her to take medical leave from her graduate school teaching and to give up many community activities, including her position as Sweden (Monroe County) town justice. As her kidneys shut down and doctors tested to find the reason why — ruling out infection and allergic reaction to medicine and settling on high blood pressure — the chemical balances in Kehoe’s system veered wildly. To counter that, she must take 37 pills a day and endure fluctuating weight changes.

Kehoe has been on Strong Memorial Hospital’s (Rochester) transplant waiting list, a list 300 names long, for almost a year now. Average time on the list before an organ becomes available, she said, ranges from two to three years. Her best hope, Rock said, is for a healthy person to donate a kidney. Testing and medical expenses incurred by the donor may be paid by the recipient’s health insurance. Additionally, Gov. George Pataki recently signed legislation allowing state workers six weeks of paid leave after an organ donation.

For more information, call Kehoe at (585) 637-5978 or Rock at (585) 637-4097.

— Barbara Pascarell Brown

(Barbara Pascarell Brown is a UUP member and academic advisor at SUNY Albany.)