Woman donates kidney to ailing pastor

Authors:

Steve Dede

December 8, 2014 3:29 PM

Margaret Domashinsk volunteered to donate one of her kidneys to her pastor who was dieing of kidney failure.

A woman in Italy, Margaret Domashinsk, saved her pastor’s life after donating her kidney for the cleric who was suffering from kidney failure.

After being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 2008, Fr. Michael Whyte began experiencing extreme tiredness and nausea which was signs of kidney failure. He was given three choices by doctors; to go for on an expensive dialysis and live five or six more years, do nothing and die within six months or get a kidney transplant from a live donor and live 20 to 25 years.

Fr. Michael Whyte took the last option which was to get a kidney transplant from a live donor and he announced at Mass that he was on the waiting list for a kidney.

More than one parishioner offered to be tested to see if they would be qualified donors, but Margaret Domashinski, a parishioner who lives in West Suffield, Mass had a matching kidney.

After undergoing many levels of testing to ensure that both she and Pastor Whyte would have good chances of recovery, Domashinski was given the okay to donate her kidney to her pastor.

With the support of her Michael, and her three daughters -- ages 17, 13 and 10, Domashinski donated her kidney to her pastor in September.

They were both released three days later.

“"I'd like to see more people thinking about all of our priests who are in hospital because not all priests have somebody there to visit them. ... We need to take care of these guys. They've given everything up," Domashinski told .