The Special K Band on Life, Music and Organ Donation

This edition of the Soundboard is mostly about guts. Visceral courage, the kind that takes you when your mind is clear but your knees are knocking. The back-to-the-wall kind of nerve. It’s about the distances we travel for each other, and the human spark that persists despite overwhelming odds.

How far would you go to help someone you barely know? Say, a coworker from a few floors below you? How about a mail carrier? Maybe someone who who married someone you know through someone else? What would you give them? Would you give them your time? Would you give them money?

Wait, here’s a good one–would you give them your kidney?

That’s the question Daniel Caruso had to ask himself when a woman named Kim Montalvo found out that an autoimmune disease called IGA Nephropathy was causing a huge buildup of antibodies and clogging her kidneys.

Within a few years of the diagnosis, Kim was on dialysis for nearly 10 hours every night. She was waiting for a transplant. She was scared senseless…and she was 26 years old.

Daniel and Kim weren’t close. They knew each other through a common in-law, and ran into each other once in a while at large family gatherings. That didn’t stop Dan from being one of the eight people who volunteered to be tested, to see if they could donate a kidney to save Kim.

Fate has a quirky sense of humor, too, because Dan was the best match for her. Needless to say, he built up his nerve and went for it. He offered to undergo the surgery and have a part of himself cut out and given to Kim. He offered to save her life.

Take a moment to think about that. It’s an uncommon sort of courage. Kim’s was even less common: She turned him down.

“Here’s this guy I don’t know very well, and he’s offering to risk his life for me,” she reflected as we talked. “I got cold feet. I thought holding out for the transplant list would be the right thing to do.”

Three more years passed. Kim spent nine-and-a-half hours every night hooked up to a dialysis machine, and as she approached the age of 30, the hits kept coming: thyroid cancer. She had capital C-Cancer. Imagine you’re waiting for a kidney to save your life and someone drops the big C on you.

“You’re just like, OK, that’s too much,” Kim says, shaking her head, able now to laugh about the terror of it all.

Let’s put aside all the over-spoken platitudes and Hallmark trademarks for a second here, and get graphic. This young woman was dying. A cruel betting man wouldn’t have placed wagers on her pulling through, not with kidney disease and cancer attacking her in tandem. And she still had the courage to tell Daniel to keep his kidney, because, in her words, “Dan is married, self-employed…he has children.”

Well, at one point, that was no longer enough to stop Daniel. Kim lost a potential transplant to another patient at her hospital. Daniel reminded her that he wasn’t getting any younger, and that his kidney was still on the table–if you’ll pardon my pun and my paraphrasing.

She finally agreed. She underwent radiation therapy for her cancer and prepared herself for a kidney transplant. All was going to run smooth.

Or was it? Dan had to get an MRI before the surgery, to make sure everything checked out. Dan is exceptionally claustrophobic. He tried, but he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t get into that machine. He…didn’t do very well.

Out in the waiting area as he collected himself, human courage–simple courage–showed again. He spent a little while talking with Kim (and a Flyers fan that happened to be there to rap Philly sports with him) and then went back into the MRI. Feet first, this time.

Kim got Dan’s kidney. She lived, and the two of them discovered that they shared a passion for music. They started a band called the Special K Band, pun most definitely intended. They started playing as a trio, did a great run of shows in Atlantic City, and expanded to a full six-piece band.

Kim wrote a poem called The Gift of Life and gave it to Dan, who expanded the poem with his side of their story. They made that poem into a song, and that song became the flagship track on a CD which shared the title. It became a hugely important part of the transplant community.

They played benefits, dozens and more, for the Gift of Life foundation in Philadelphia. Dan plays drums and percussion, and sings. Kim sings–even though the radiation treatment for her cancer damaged her salivary glands and made it more difficult to do.

I’m not the first news-jockey to tell this story. Heck, I’m not the second either. Still, the story matters. Courage is a big deal, people. So is compassion. The lesson is that every action you do can lead to more actions. The only guaranteed wrong choice is not choosing. Entropy is the enemy of life. Kim and Dan are certainly a testament to that. Kim’s exact words to me were this:

“I grew stronger in my faith while I was sick, and grew closer to God, my friends, my family. They lift you up. They bring you something, when they are there for you. Every bad situation has something good ready to come out of it, if you’re open to it. So don’t give up.

“You have to hope–hope is what songs are all about to me. Regardless of circumstances. Circumstances don’t define you. You’re sick, but you aren’t a sick person. You don’t get caught up, because that’s not who you are…there’s nothing to complain about.”

Kim and Dan’s band, the Special K Band, has been the house band for the Gift of Life program for the past eight years. They’re glad that they’ve been suddenly thrust into the transplant community, because they’ve seen how their story has moved others and helped others.

Keep an eye on their calendar and enjoy a show filled with fun cover songs and great personalities. While you’re there, mention that you know what their band name means. Kim will love that you didn’t ask her why she named her band after a breakfast cereal!