Months of worry, frustration, hope and relief were packaged inside a white box with a lavender sticker on the side that read “Living donor organ for transplant.”

A courier pulled apart a series of colored receipts and handed a yellow slip to a nurse, who then walked briskly toward the operating room with the box that represented the best shot at a normal life for Nyke and Will Block. A newly married couple, the Blocks had spent months worrying after learning Nyke needed a new kidney.

“I’m nervous, but I’m excited for this to all be done and over with and to be back on the road to being healthy again,” Nyke, 25, said while waiting outside a pre-operation area early one August morning. “That’s the most exciting part.”

RELATED:More from this series on organ donations in Wisconsin

It took months and hundreds of people to make the operation at Froedtert Hospital & the Medical College of Wisconsin possible. For Nyke, and the roughly 2,500 other people in Wisconsin on organ waiting lists, the difference between life and death can come down to dozens of seemingly random factors, things like donors, anatomical matches and just plain luck.

Nyke Block and her father Chad Stilen team up to both give and get a kidney at Froedert Medical College of Wisconsin. (Sept. 2015) William Glasheen/Post-Crescent Media

Gannett Wisconsin Media readers first met Nyke in April in a story that was part of a series in partnership with Green Bay Packers wide receiver Randall Cobb and Froedtert to raise awareness about organ donation. In April, she had prepared herself for surgery only to have her hopes dashed.

“I don’t want to be too hopeful for this because I’ve already had two fall apart, but now it’s getting real,” she said two days before the operation.

Here she was again, just days before surgery for her and her father.

“It’s kind of like that fluttery feeling in my stomach like this is really going to happen,” she said.

It was a little before 5 a.m. when Nyke and Will Block and Barb and Chad Stilen — Nyke’s parents — arrived at the hospital near Milwaukee.

In a little more than an hour, Nyke and Chad would be wheeled into adjacent operating rooms.As part of a chain of interconnected donations between at least seven people, she’d get a new kidney while he would donate one of his to help someone in the same situation as his daughter.

Nyke wore a distressed green Randall Cobb Green Bay Packers t-shirt. Will and Barb dressed in bright green shirts with a recycling symbol on the front. On the back the shirts read: “Recycle your organs; Be an organ donor.”

Nyke Block kidney transplant at Froedert Medical College of Wisconsin on Wednesday, August 19, 2015, in Milwaukee.
(Photo: Wm.Glasheen/Post-Crescent Media)

Hours-long operations awaited. While medical tests indicated there was a high probability her body would accept the organ, there was always risk the kidney, donated by a woman in her 30s from California, might be rejected.

For months, declining kidney function (it was down to 9 percent prior to the operation) forced Nyke and her family to face the prospects of a transplant, or going on kidney dialysis several times a week, a thought she didn’t relish.

As Nyke and Chad prepared for surgery, both quietly reflected with their spouses. Will sat at Nyke’s bed side as intravenous tubes were inserted in her hands, then held her hand as doctors and medical staff talked about the procedure.

Outside the beige curtain sequestering Nyke from the hustle of the pre-operation area, Barb moved between her husband and her daughter, spending time with both. There was a risk Chad or Nyke could face complications in surgery, and the outside possibility they may not wake up at all.

After an hour of preparation, Chad’s bed was pushed through a set of wooden doors into cream-colored hall leading to the operating room. Twenty-five minutes later, the courier and donor kidney arrived. It wasn’t long before Nyke disappeared through the same doors.

Hours of waiting and worrying lay ahead for Barb, Will, Nyke’s younger brother, Nyckol, and family and friends following by phone and text messages. They passed the time in a private family room on the ground floor of the hospital with coffee, and flax seed banana bread.

“It’s been a roller coaster of emotions,” Barb Stilen said. “With Chad ... he was just going to give and that was all there was to it. God is in control of this, and it feels better knowing that.”

The road to the operating room started nine months earlier with a routine heath screening indicating Nyke had a serious health issue that had, unknowingly, been plaguing her for years called IgA nephropathy.

The condition occurs when an antibody called immunoglobulin A lodges in the kidney causing inflammation. It eventually hampers the organs’ ability to filter waste, excess water and electrolytes from the blood.

Untreated, the condition can be fatal.

“This was totally unforeseen,” Will said. “Going from, ‘We’re healthy and in the next couple of months or years we’ll be starting a family and getting a house,’ to ... ‘You’re on a kidney transplant list.’”

Nyke has been a steadying force through the diagnosis and uncertainty of waiting, even as they bought their first home and moved from Oshkosh to Appleton.

“She’s one tough cookie,” Will, 24, said. “She doesn’t complain and just goes on day by day... She tries to stay positive and keeps the faith. That’s really helped me.”

Nyke endured a number of false hopes in the months leading up to the operation, something experts said is not unheard of while waiting for a transplant. Patients can wait months or years. Scheduled operations or donor chains can break down multiple times.

There are two primary ways patients like Nyke find help. Some organs come from people who have died while others come from living donors — like Nyke’s dad — who step forward to help a friend, relative or stranger in need.

Nationwide last year, about 6,000 people served as living donors. Another 8,500 gave organs after passing away, according to Donate Life America. About 123,000 people across the country await a life-saving transplant while 13 die each day waiting for the call the Block family celebrated cautiously.

Nyke had seen two other attempts at a transplant crumble. An April surgery would have had her dad donate directly to Nyke but was scuttled days before it was scheduled when a late round of medical tests indicated there was a risk she could reject his kidney.

The family turned to friends, relatives and coworkers for possible matches. They also entered a program linking people in need of a transplant with those willing to give, but who may not be compatible with a family member or friend.

Those donations, called paired exchanges, can involve dozens of people but can run the risk of breaking down for any number of reasons, including heath issues with participants or just plain bad luck.

Nyke’s initial chain, put together in spring, fell apart when one of the participants was injured in an all-terrain vehicle accident. Another chain was assembled through the summer.

This one yielded the right combination of people, and good fortune, for the operation to proceed on Aug. 19.

Dr. Michael Zimmerman, who performed the surgery on Chad, said each donor is different and there is no “routine” procedure.

“When a live-donor operation becomes routine, it’s dangerous,” he said a few hours after the surgery. “We live by that. This is not just my job, not just something we do, it’s a way we live. We try to never make it routine. Ever.”

Zimmerman works in a profession that has no set hours and few geographic boundaries with organs traveling to, and from, different parts of the country.

“It doesn’t stop,” he said. “The operations are big, they’re difficult, and the patients are almost dead... (But) when we’re busy we’re happy. People are getting transplanted, people are getting off the list. We want to get that phone call.”

It was 8:16 a.m. — but felt like it was much later in the day — when Barb was told Chad was doing well and the doctors on the West Coast, where his kidney would help someone else, were happy with the condition of the organ.

Will would wait another 140 minutes before Dr. Christopher Johnson told him the news his wife was doing well and her new kidney was functioning.

“I feel better now,” he said, cracking a slight smile.

Medical staff told the family Nyke would likely feel better almost immediately after the operation thanks to her new kidney. Everyone expected Chad would feel the effects of giving up one of his organs. If all went well he would spend a few days in the hospital, recover, and eventually go back to work.

Her dad was never far from Nyke’s thoughts.

“So, how’s dad?” Nyke asked her mom while lying flat in a hospital bed moments after seeing her family for the first time since surgery that afternoon.

“He’s a little rough,” Barb said.

“Is he in pain?” Nyke asked.

The family is planning a benefit for Nyke and is working to make others aware of IgA nephropathy and the importance of organ donation and donor registration.

After riding the ups and downs of the last several months, Nyke urged others facing the same hurdles to stay strong.

“Stay positive,” she said. “I went through a lull where I was getting bitter, and it’s a frustrating process, but if you keep positive and surround yourself with people who love you and support you, it does make the time go faster.”

Will said the transplant marks a significant step forward in Nyke’s recovery, but it’s not the end of the road.

“It’s the next step to getting her healthy,” he said. “There’s going to be a long road to recovery... but we’re hoping she’ll be back to feeling near 100 percent and we can move forward from there.”

Nyke was released from the hospital after five days and her dad got out after a week, his release slowed by post-operative pneumonia.

A list of medications, tests and follow up doctor’s visits are the norm for Nyke in the immediate wake of the transplant.

“Preserving the kidney is the big thing now,” she said more than a week after the operation. “The risk of rejection is higher the first three years, and the first three months are really critical. (Rejection) can happen, but they watch the medication closely… to make sure it doesn’t.”

Nyke said she’d like to someday communicate with her donor, who, for now, remains unknown to the family. She’s already expressed her gratitude and love to the father who made her transplant possible and helped other strangers in the donation chain.

“I couldn’t really ever put into words how thankful I am for him doing this for me,” she said. “For him it seems like the natural thing to do because I’m his daughter. He not only gave me life, but without him, none of these other people … who needed organs would have received them.”

Resources

• Donor registry: yesIwillwisconsin.com

• Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin: froedtert.com/donatelife

• National Kidney Foundation: kidney.org

• Donate Life America: donatelife.net

• Wisconsin Department of Transportation (donor section): dot.wisconsin.gov/drivers/drivers/apply/donor.htm

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