Catholic Charities employee donates kidney to co-worker

Published: 2004-11-15

METUCHEN, N.J. (CNS) -- Mary Jane DiPaolo and Cindy Warner, co-workers with Catholic Charities in the Metuchen Diocese, have spent the last 11 years helping needy families through the agency's child-care division. But when kidney failure forced DiPaolo to seek a donor for a kidney transplant, she found herself the recipient of some charity from Warner, who donated one of her kidneys. Nearly a month after successful transplant surgery Oct. 19, both women were doing very well, reported Barbara Hanley, administrative director of the transplant program at St. Luke's Hospital in New York, where the surgery was performed. "Cindy went to California on a vacation and Mary Jane was here yesterday," Hanley said Nov. 12. Compared with the more than 500 kidney transplant patients with whom Dr. Allan Benvenisty has worked, both women are on course with their respective recoveries and are doing better than most, Hanley said. Working together in the same division as long as they have makes them like members of a family, DiPaolo said in an interview with The Catholic Spirit, Metuchen diocesan newspaper.

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