The transplant operation in February began with the organ harvest in UT Southwestern’s new William P. Clements Jr. University Hospital and ended in Children’s Medical Center Dallas, where a 16-year-old boy from Plano got a new kidney.
 
Before the operation, Dr. Dev Desai stopped by the kidney donor’s room to shake her hand and talk to her before the surgery. She had great confidence in him, she told him, and with good reason.
 
Trezza, a golfer, Boy Scout and a high school junior, had been living with hydronephrosis, a condition from birth that caused his kidneys to swell and not function properly. He needed a kidney transplant, and his mother, Melissa Trezza, was a perfect match.
 
At Clements University Hospital, Dr. Desai worked for hours cutting away tissue around her kidney. The work was done with long surgical tools inserted into the patient’s abdomen, and Dr. Desai watched what he was doing on a TV screen that showed a greatly enlarged picture of the kidney.
 
The quiet, focused work broke into intense bustling when the kidney was pulled out. Dr. Desai hurried over with the kidney to a separate table where he and another surgeon stooped over it, busily working to flush it out and prepare it for transplant. Time was precious. They needed to complete the procedure within three minutes for optimum results.
 
The kidney turned gray – an excellent sign. It was put in an ice chest and rushed to Children’s, where Vinney was already in surgery.
 
Dr. Desai showed up several minutes after the kidney.  He and Dr. David Cha prepared the kidney as other surgeons, just a few feet away, worked on the 16-year-old boy.
 
Eventually, the boy’s bad kidney was removed and another time-sensitive stage began.
 
“Now they’re on the clock. The kidney is out,” Dr. Desai said, as his colleagues continued to work. In minutes, the new kidney was connected. Hours of work and many years of expertise had produced another success, and Dr. Desai stopped to ponder on the larger meaning of it all.
 
“It’s one of the unique things about being human. Sacrificing for a family member,” he said.

Melissa said she gladly donated her kidney to her son, allowing him to avoid dialysis and prevent an early death.

“We always had a really strong relationship with Children’s,” Mrs. Trezza said. “It’s like our extended family.”