Woman Shovels Out of Snowbound Home To Get To Her Kidney Transplant

The New England Patriots may have won Super Bowl XLIX, but a 40-year-old Indiana woman was the real winner on Super Bowl Sunday.

After seven years on the national transplant waiting list, Antonette Sloan got the call last Sunday morning that she’d be getting a kidney. There was only one small problem: a blizzard was raging outside.

“My mother told me to start digging,” Sloan said.

As her mother, Ruth Harding, started the trek from Chicago’s Southeast Side to her daughter’s home in Hammond, Indiana, Sloan was outside shoveling.

“I was in shock,” she said. “I was throwing snow everywhere.”

By the time her mother arrived, Sloan was packed and ready to go to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn. As Sloan and her mother made the treacherous drive down I-294 through what would become the Chicago-region’s fifth largest snowstorm, her surgeon, Dr. Deepak Mital, was assembling his transplant drive.

Sloan was on the operating table a half-hour before Super Bowl kickoff. Before Patriots rookie Malcolm Butler’s game-winning interception, Sloan had a new, fully functioning kidney.

“They got me registered and prepared for surgery,” Sloan said. “They were like, ‘time to go.’ I thought this is really going to happen right now.”

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The Indiana woman began experiencing symptoms of hypertension after the birth of her twin daughters 23 years ago. In 2008, Sloan was diagnosed in the early stages of renal failure.

For the past three years, Sloan has undergone dialysis three times a week at an overnight clinic. After each session, she’d go to her full-time job as a customer service representative for a finance company. Sloan also took care of her family.

“Any opportunity I got, I’d sleep,” she said. “They were very understanding at work and would let me take 30-minute naps here and there. They let me nap or I’d be grumpy.”

Dr. Mital said the average time on the waiting list for a kidney transplant is about five years. Sloan had received three calls previously, but each time Dr. Mital told her he was waiting for the perfect kidney.

The surgeon said that Sloan got to the hospital in the nick of time.

“When they called me Sunday morning the kidney was already 25 hours old,” Dr. Mital explained, who is also the surgical director of Christ Medical Center’s kidney transplant program. “You don’t want to go beyond 36 hours of preservation, so it was like we had to get her right in. Thankfully, her mother was able to drive her in from Indiana.”

Dr. Mital, who has performed transplants on Christmas Eve, Christmas, Thanksgiving and even his own birthday, said Sloan’s prognosis for a full recovery is excellent.

“She’s a good patient,” he said. “The kidney started working right away.”

Sloan has since learned the donor was an 18-year-old from out of state who died in a motor vehicle accident.

“As soon as I learned a little more about the donor, I immediately prayed for the family,” she said.

Since the surgery, Sloan’s energy level is much higher. Her mother says her daughter is doing great.

“I noticed that color was better,” Harding said. “It looked like life is back in her eyes and her complexion is so much better. She’s my baby.”

First on Sloan’s list of things to do now that she has a new kidney is to go on vacation, an impossibility while on dialysis. She’s looking forward to being active with her four children and three grandchildren

“I want to take them to Disney World,” she said.

As for Dr. Mital, he was able to watch the final moments of the big game, but he already knew the outcome.

“I was rooting for Antonette and her kidney,” he said. “It was a great win.”

Photo I - Antonette Sloan, of Hammond, IN, gives a thumbs up after receiving a kidney transplant during Chicago’s Super Bowl blizzard.

Photo II - Sloan, her nurse, Carly Favaro, mom Ruth Harding, and Dr. Deepak Mital, the surgeon who performed Sloan’s kidney transplant.

Photo III - Sloan with her transplant team at Advocate Christ Medical Center.