June 4, 2001

Gift of life: Mom donates kidney to son
___BEEVILLE--Two lifetimes aren't enough for Phil Russell to express his gratitude to his mother, Maxine Russell Ingle.
___Twice she has bestowed the gift of life upon her son.
___She gave him birth Sept 1, 1956. And she gave him a second chance at life Dec. 20, 2000, when she donated a kidney for his ailing body.
___Mother and son, both lifelong Baptists, are doing fine and looking toward a bright future.
___Russell, a former staff member at Howard Payne University and Dallas Baptist University and minister at churches in East Texas and Houston, discovered he had juvenile diabetes when he was 30 years old.
___ He suffered severe weight loss. A few years later, he exhibited high blood pressure. Then came "a really bad episode," which put him in a coma for 79 hours in 1995.
___In 1996, he began to lose function in both kidneys. Forced to pick between dialysis or a transplant, he chose dialysis. "The (anti-rejection) drugs weren't that well-developed, and the side effects were horrendous," he recalled.
___But last year, his body began to experience difficulties with dialysis, Mrs. Ingle said.
___"It got to where he couldn't even walk from his room to my room" at A.C. Jones High School, where they both taught.
___When he no longer could put off a transplant, he turned to his extended "family" of Baptists. Those roots run long and deep.
___His father, Ed Russell, was pastor of First Baptist Church in Alvin when he died in 1980. And in addition to his own Baptist connections, Russell's step-father, Tommy Ingle, is a chaplain with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in Beeville. Both his mother and step-father are former faculty members at Dallas Baptist University.
___Specifically, Russell turned to First Baptist Church in Beeville. Three members, including his mother, volunteered to be tested as donors.
___She was the best match, and on the same day, five days before last Christmas, they both underwent surgery at Methodist Transplant and Specialty Hospital in San Antonio.
___Three days later, she went home. Three days after that, he did too, in record time.
___Both mother and son are doing fine, Mrs. Ingle said. She retired from teaching this spring. And after a semester's rest, he's anticipating continuing as a teacher or guidance counselor.
___"We both did so well," she said. "I offered to donate a kidney a long time ago, but he's real protective of his mother."
___But frightening as the procedure might have been, the outcome never was in doubt, she added. "We had people all over the world praying for us. We couldn't lose."
___Written by Editor Marv Knox; reported by Tish Dumas of the Beeville Bee-Picayune

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