The gift that keeps on giving

When he got out of school in the mid-1980s and his blood pressure started going up, he learned he had IgA nephropathy—an autoimmune disease that attacks the kidneys.

He did OK until the spring of 1998, when he got a letter saying to call his doctor. That’s when he learned it was time to get on a kidney transplant list. He felt OK, but that didn’t last long.

“Within three months I was feeling terrible,” he said.

He began getting low, dull headaches, nausea and fatigue as his hemoglobin— the oxygen-carrying protein pigment in the blood—
went down.

“You don’t get enough oxygen,” he said.

Because he owned his own optometry office in Watford City, he didn’t have other employees who could fill in, so he kept working full time. Between patients and over the lunch hour, he’d grab naps.

Sanford Health performed the state’s first kidney transplant in 1988, and it remains the only hospital in central and western North Dakota that performs transplants.

Nadim Koleilat, MD, transplant surgeon, performed Nordby’s transplant in 1999. Dr. Koleilat has been doing transplants since 1991, and Sanford Health averages 20 kidney transplants per year. The surgeon said once testing is done on a potential living donor, the surgery can be done within two to five weeks. People who have to wait for a transplant from a deceased donor wait an average of three years in the North Dakota region, Dr. Koleilat said.