above, Lindsey visits Citi Field with ex-Met Ed Hearn, who also lives with FSGS.
SAFE AT HOME: Former Mets executive Jim Duquette (above) today will donate a kidney to 10-year-old daughter Lindsey, who has suffered from Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis since she was 2 and has lived the past year without kidney function. INSET: Lindsey visits Citi Field with ex-Met Ed Hearn, who also lives with FSGS. (
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As a former executive with the Mets and Orioles, Jim Duquette knows all about trades.
Some work. Others don’t.
This morning, at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore, Duquette will make the biggest trade of his life. And this one has to work.
The quality of his 10-year-old daughter’s life depends on it.
Duquette will trade one of his kidneys for the chance to give his youngest child, Lindsey, a chance at a normal life. The fourth-grader has suffered from FSGS (Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis) since she was a toddler and, for the past year, has been living without kidney function while awaiting a transplant. Lindsey, all 4-foot-1 and 60 pounds of her, spends hours every day tethered to a dialysis machine.
“When we started out with this whole thing, I never would have imagined we’d have ever gotten to this point,” Duquette said by phone this weekend. “But Lindsey’s been dealing with this since she was 2 1/2.’’
FSGS, for which there is no known cause or cure, is the leading cause of kidney failure in children. More than 8,000 people are diagnosed with FSGS and Nephrotic Syndrome annually. Ed Hearn, a member of the Mets’ 1986 world championship team, suffers from FSGS despite three kidney transplants. Former NBA star Alonzo Mourning suffered from FSGS and underwent a transplant in 2003.
Duquette, now a host on MLB Network Radio heard on SiriusXM, is a board member for The NephCure Foundation, a national kidney disease non-profit that funds research and provides education about FSGS and Nephrotic Syndrome.
He said there’s a 30 percent rate of the disease coming back, even with a new kidney. Of course, that means there’s a 70 percent chance it won’t.
“I like those percentages,” he said. “We’re pretty hopeful.’’
The father of three said he may have gotten queasy, but he never hesitated once he learned he was the best donor match for Lindsey. His brother and his sister, Lindsey’s uncle and aunt, also were matches.
“The first 30 minutes I had a little bit of an upset stomach because I knew what it would entail, the kidney … the thought of how much pain it might cause me,” he said. “But, thinking about it a little bit more, I got an adrenaline rush, the kind you’d get after a big win. I remember taking the train into the city and I got off the subway and I wanted to take the stairs two at a time. I would have in my younger years, but I didn’t this time.
“I knew how much it would help, would impact Lindsey’s life. Any of the stuff I will endure is minor [compared] to what she has had to go through. She’s had multiple surgeries, 50-60 hospitalizations, over and over. With the chance and the hope that she can have a normal life — and put normal in quotations — I wouldn’t have it any other way.’’
Today, Duquette will miss the first round of the First-Year Player Draft for the first time since he became involved in baseball in 1991. Each year, he either has been in the draft room or, more recently, providing analysis on television or radio. The draft will have to go on without him.
“I don’t think I’ll be up to watching the first round,” he said. “But I’ll watch the second round. I’ll be up for the second day.”
Despite the looming transplant, the 46-year-old Duquette spent Friday night working alongside Howie Rose in the Mets radio booth, filling in for Josh Lewin. After spending most of his career with the Mets, including a 15-month stint as general manager from 2003-04 before leaving in 2005 to become the Orioles’ vice president of baseball operations, Duquette was on hand as Johan Santana delivered the franchise’s first no-hitter.
“He seemed quite optimistic [about the surgery],” Rose said yesterday. “He’s thrilled for the chance his daughter will have for an improved lifestyle. He’s a great guy and a pleasure to work with.”
For her part, Lindsey is handling things fairly well, Duquette said. She got a royal send-off on her last day of school from the students, faculty and administration at Sparks Elementary School in suburban Baltimore, where Duquette, his wife, Pam, and their children now live.
“She’s had some nervous moments,” he said, “but when we asked her what she’s nervous about she said she’s not nervous about the surgery. I said, ‘How come?’ and she said, ‘Because I’m going to be asleep for the surgery.’ “She’s had her moments every once in a while, which you kind of expect for a 10-year-old. But, overall, she’s had her sister [Lauren] and brother [Matthew] to be a big distraction. … And that helps.’’
“That’s kind of simplistic, but when she’s awake, she’s attached to all these machines making all sorts of noises. That causes more trepidation and nervousness and anxiousness. So, from a child’s perspective, that made a lot of sense to me. She didn’t fear what I fear.
The surgery is expected to last 4 ½ hours for Lindsey and 2 ½ hours for her dad.
“From the moment she’s ready to receive [the kidney] and they pull it out of me laparoscopically, cool it down, drain it of blood and bring it to her, put it in and connect it to her, takes about an hour,” Duquette said. “The surgeons tell me it seems like it takes forever, but in real time it takes an hour. Then we’ll see from there.
“There’ll be some anxious moments until we hear that she’s out [of surgery] and doing OK.’’
And in the days and weeks and months and years ahead, everyone will hope for the best.
“They’re very optimistic that she won’t have a reoccurrence and she’ll live a normal life,” Duquette said. “She’ll be on anti-rejection medication for the rest of her life, and you always have the fear of infection. But if it goes the way it’s planned, she should have a relatively normal life. There are many people out there who live fairly normal lives.”
“The kidney is going to last her 15, 16, 17 years. There is a long shelf life for healthy kidneys if [the disease] doesn’t reoccur. So, by the time she needs another one, they are making a lot of advances in actually growing new kidneys, so that’s a realistic possibility. Or there will be other people who’ll be tested and there will be matches. But let’s hope she doesn’t have to go down that road.’’