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Patients Tell Their Stories - Owen Mcniff Jr. |
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Patients Tell Their Stories - Owen McNiff Jr.
Just over a year ago, at the age of 80, the late Owen A. McNiff Jr. was still operating heavy equipment at a large nursery in Connecticut, but he hadn't been feeling well for some time. He was fatigued and felt a general malaise.
His daughter, Katherine "Kitty" McNiff James of South Deerfield, says his doctor gave her father routine blood tests and diagnosed liver damage. Further investigation revealed damage that looked as if it was caused by abuse of alcohol, but Kitty's father hadn't had a drop to drink in over 20 years, and that fact led his physicians to look to a diagnosis of hemachromotosis.
With hemachromotosis, a genetic disorder that originated in Europe, the body stores all the iron it ingests - rather than storing some and excreting the excess - and over time, the high iron levels damage the liver and other organs. The treatment for hemachromotosis is to draw blood from the patient - a pint once a week in the first year to dilute the iron levels, and then in intervals spaced further apart as the recovery begins.
For these phlebotomy treatments, Kitty first took her father from his home in Suffield, Conn., to a Springfield hospital. Once a week, they spent hours filling out paperwork, waiting for results of weekly blood tests and then waiting in an outpatient clinic for the treatment, for which Owen's health insurance was billed.
When Owen moved to Amherst, his new physician, Dr. Kim Abell, told Kitty and her father that at Cooley Dickinson Hospital, the same treatment would be far less time consuming and much less stressful because it could be done through the Blood Bank rather than through outpatient services. It would be free, and the blood could be reused by those in need.
Harry Sanner, the Blood Bank's team leader, explains that Cooley Dickinson is one of only a handful of hospitals in the state to have applied for and received a variance from the federal Food and Drug Administration, allowing it to reuse blood obtained from therapeutic phlebotomies performed on hemachromatosis patients. "This is a win-win situation for both the hemachromotosis patient and the hospital," Harry says. "It allows the hemachromatosis patient to obtain a therapeutic phlebotomy at no cost, and it augments the hospital's blood inventory."
During 2006, Harry says Cooley Dickinson performed about 195 therapeutic phlebotomies on hemachromatosis patients. "We thus had 195 units of red blood cells that we did not have to purchase from the Red Cross or recruit from our donor base," he adds.
Kitty says her father was very pleased, not only with the ease of treatment that Cooley Dickinson provided, but with the excellent patient care he received each time he visited here. "He would arrive and the phlebotomists would say, 'Oh it's so great to see you, Owen! Come right in," Kitty says. "They would coddle him throughout the process, chat with him, and give him drinks and treats. He actually looked forward to coming to the Cooley Dickinson Blood Bank each week. They were so wonderful to him."
Because Owen's disorder was discovered late in his life, the high iron levels caused permanent damage to his organs and could not be reversed through treatment. When the disorder is diagnosed early in life, though, the treatments can be highly successful.
Owen died in January, and to show their gratitude toward Cooley Dickinson Hospital, family members designated that memorial gifts be made to the Blood Bank. "Cooley Dickinson was just so infinitely wonderful to him," says Kitty. To date, the Blood Bank has received a multitude of donations in Owen's memory.
The gift that Owen left his family was potentially lifesaving. His family members have been tested for hemachromotosis and will continue to have iron levels monitored.
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