Former truck driver Mike Snuffer wasn’t used to slowing down, especially as someone who could get to Las Vegas in 48 hours with little if any stops other than to fuel up.
Yet, a year and a half ago, the Secaucus resident’s life nearly came to a halt when his kidneys failed and he was told it could take five to seven years before he found a viable donor.
When Verona resident Len Basile, a fishing buddy and friend of eight years, stepped forward to donate a kidney, Snuffer finally got his life back.
Apparently, Snuffer had saved Basile’s life years earlier, but Basile saw the gesture as helping a friend, not repaying the deed.
Life on the road
“You can’t afford to stop to go to a doctor,” said Snuffer last week. A resident of Secaucus since the mid-1990s, Snuffer ran his own rig since 1984 into the early 1990s across 48 states and Canada. “If you own your own truck you can’t afford [getting sick]…because if the wheels aren’t turning then you don’t make a dime.”
Snuffer said that he would be away at least a month before returning to his home, and then he’d have to get back out on the road in two days’ time. Without regular doctors visits, Snuffer only knew that he had sugar in his urine, which can be an indication of diabetes, from random drug tests. But, he said, “I never did anything about it.”
He was diagnosed with diabetes around 1999. He suffered from two heart attacks within a 10-day period in 2000. After that, his ankles, lower legs, and feet would always swell, a sign of kidney disease, but he always attributed the symptoms to the heart attacks.
During the year 2010 Snuffer’s health deteriorated dramatically but he did not know about the severity of his condition until he ended up in the hospital that November due to kidney failure.
On the waiting list for a donor
Snuffer didn’t believe he was going to make it after he learned that it could take up to 10 years to find a kidney donor. He was on a waiting list with 3,000 other people. Until then, he had to undergo dialysis, which is a procedure that performs the kidneys’ functions and filters waste products from the blood.
“The first thing that came to my mind was ‘I’m a dead man…My life is over,’ ” he said. Snuffer said that he just didn’t believe he could last that long on dialysis.
He has two children, Janice and Sterlin, who live with him and his wife in Secaucus. His oldest son, Steven, lives in Idaho.
Steven immediately told his father that he would donate his kidney, but he wasn’t a match and no one else in his family could donate.
In addition, a round robin that began with his son’s donation to another person and ended with a stranger’s donation to Snuffer was unsuccessful.
“We need people to step up for organ donating.” – Mike Snuffer
__________
A promise kept
Snuffer’s children had put “a kidney for dad” on their Christmas wish list. Snuffer went out West to stay with his son for six weeks and attend his wedding because he thought he wouldn’t make it to Christmas.
The day before his son’s wedding, he got a call from St. Barnabas Medical Center that they had found a match.
It wasn’t until a family meeting a week before the transplant in November that Snuffer finally saw his donor face to face.
“I had no clue who it was until he walked in the door. And I had my back to him when he walked in…the next thing I know I am getting slapped in the back of my head and it was Lenny. He said, ‘I told ya.’ ”
A year before that, when Basile found out Snuffer needed a kidney, he told him he would be the donor. Basile and Snuffer were both members of the Hudson River Fisherman’s Association and had known each other for eight years. When Basile found out that Snuffer’s son wasn’t a match, he stepped forward to get tested.
“He’s my friend. He needed help,” said Basile. “I knew it was going to be me somehow.”
“You know how many thousands of times I heard that, but nobody ever stepped up,” said Snuffer. “It was kind of weird because I saved his butt one night.”
Snuffer, who is 6’3, had saved Basile, who is 5’8, from drowning during a fishing tournament years earlier after a wave knocked Basile underwater. “I just reached in and straight armed him straight up out of the water and I carried him back to the shore like a piece of luggage,” said Snuffer. “I just acted. Somebody needed help. I was there. And that is the way [Lenny] is.”
Snuffer said Basile told the nurses at the hospital that in order to keep Snuffer on the earth, he’d give both of his kidneys.
“He is one of a kind,” said Snuffer. “I got my life back.”
Raising awareness
“What we need is more people like Lenny,” said Snuffer. “We need people to step up for organ donating.”
To donate a kidney, you must be in good health and have normal kidney function and anatomy according to the National Kidney Foundation. People can live normal lives with only one kidney, and their life expectancy does not change.
Snuffer has been invited to give presentations at schools and will appear at Montclair High School, where Basile teaches, the week of March 12.
“I had the easy part. I really did,” said Basile. “I am not a hero. It is people like Mike that have this ongoing struggle…It is the doctors and nurses and staff of the organ transplant teams. They are the real heroes.”
“As far as being a donor, there is not that much for you to do other than not being afraid,” added Snuffer. “I want people to quit being afraid.”
For more information about making a kidney donation visit: www.kidney.org or to learn how to register as a donor, visit http://donatelife.net.
To comment on this story online visit www.hudsonreporter.com. Adriana Rambay Fernández can be reached at afernandez@hudsonreporter.com.