Set aside for a moment the fact that Stan Levin would no doubt prefer not having to have a kidney transplanted next week.
But kidney disease didn't ask for his preference, so Levin, 70, of West Orange, N.J., is focused instead on the positives resulting from an uncomfortable and life-threatening situation.
Shortly after his diseased second kidney was removed last August, both his adult children -- Eric Levin, 42, of Kernersville and Marcy Siegel, 45, of Cedar Grove, N.J. -- couldn't get tested fast enough to see if they were candidates to give a kidney to their father. And when they were told that they both were perfect matches, they debated who would get to be the donor.
"Isn't that a great fight for your kids to have?" Stan Levin said. "Marcy was married with two children, and Eric wasn't, so they decided that he'd be the one to give up a kidney."
Looking ahead
Stan Levin is suffering from cancer of the kidneys, the result of his service with the U.S. Air Force in the late 1950s.
His job -- one that he did proudly and without question -- was to help clean planes that flew through the huge mushroom clouds that resulted from an intense period of nuclear-warhead testing in the Marshall Islands.
According to a report compiled by the Government Accountability Office, about 200,000 active-duty military personnel participated in atmospheric nuclear tests between 1945 and 1962.
The military detonated 35 nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands during Operation Hardtack in 1958, a heated year in the Cold War arms race and one in which the United States conducted 77 tests.
Some were exposed to radiation, and, since 1980, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has paid without question the claims filed by those vets for 16 different types of cancer.
None of that matters to Stan Levin, who prefers looking ahead. "I'm a flag-waver," he said. "I'm very proud of the Air Force and my government. They didn't know all the dangers back then."
His first kidney had to be removed in July 2007. The second one followed last August. Soon afterward, Siegel and Eric Levin started the process to determine whether they would be suitable donors.
From there, they figured it was only a matter of who would be the donor and when the transplant could be scheduled. "When we found out we both matched, it was ‘you, me, you, me,'" Siegel said. "This is going to be a wonderful thing."
Anything for dad
Eric Levin -- who, coincidentally got engaged last week -- plans to leave today for New Jersey. The surgery is scheduled for Wednesday at St. Barnabas Hospital in Livingston, N.J.
He says he is a little nervous but focused "on the happiness my father is going to have." And the family is grateful that his employer, Atlantic Coast ToyotaLift, is giving him all the time off he needs.
The odd thing about the gift that the son is giving to the father is that it was initially turned down for the same reason that son and daughter were so eager to help in the first place: love.
Stan Levin wanted to shield his children from any potential health risk of giving up a kidney. He planned to wait for an organ from a donor who had died.
"I turned the kids down," Stan Levin said. "I didn't want to take a kidney from my kids."
That changed in January when he spoke to an organ-donation coordinator at the University of Pennsylvania and she told him about the death of her own father. "She started to cry and said ‘Don't do this for you, do it for your children. It's the greatest gift a child can give to a parent,'" he said. "That really touched my heart, so I called the kids and said OK."
The news was most welcome to his family. They never stopped worrying about him. "It's just one of those things you'd like to think anybody would do," Eric Levin said. "I can't imagine saying no to anything my father needs."
■ Scott Sexton can be reached at 727-7481 or at ssexton@wsjournal.com.
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