Donated tissue brings blessing from sorrow

Former Lady Griz basketball star among those who have benefited

	After college, Krista played professional basketball in Denmark See also: Understanding and Caring

(Editor’s note: The following article and “Potential donors” are reprinted with permission from The Missoulian. Both articles were written by Missoulian reporter Ginny Merriam.)

When Mary Hainlin’s husband killed himself, it was unimaginable that any good could come of it.

But then Ben’s body helped more than two dozen other people live. A 60-some-year-old grandfather got his heart. A single mother of two young boys in the South got one of his kidneys, freeing her from the rigorous routine of dialysis. A young man full of promise got his liver. Two people got his corneas, one in the Northwest and one outside the country.

“They told me from just the tissue in his body - his bone cells and his skin - 30 to 40 people benefited,” Hainlin said in a recent phone interview from her Helena office. “It was just - words don’t describe how absolutely amazing it was. I knew he wanted this.”

Hainlin and her daughter got a card from the wife of the young man who received her husband’s liver.

“She just said, ‘Words can’t describe. We thought we were going to lose him, and now we have him.’ ”

Knowing that made her own family’s loss easier, Hainlin said.

“I just like thinking that there’s all these people walking around with pieces of Ben in them,” she said.

	"Dr. Shutte was my strength during rehab," says Krista Redpath (left).

Because of a donor family like the Hainlins, Krista Redpath was able to play basketball with her University of Montana Lady Griz teammates during her senior year. She took part in their fourth championship run with an anterior cruciate ligament from a donor in her right knee. Now 26 and an account manager for the health care and networking division of Pyron Technologies in Missoula, she can run and jump and bicycle and take several yoga classes each week.

“I’m normal now,” she said in a recent interview. “My life is totally normal. I have a wonderful knee. My knee doesn’t hinder me. It’s just amazing what a tissue can do.”

Redpath wanted to be a Lady Griz basketball player since she was 12 years old and her parents were driving her to the games from their Great Falls home. When her dream came true, basketball became the most important thing in her life.

The day before the first game of her senior season - Halloween and a full moon in 1998 - she went to a morning practice at McGill Hall. Supervised by her coach, Shannon Cate-Schweyen, in a two-on-two drill, Redpath jumped and felt something give in her right knee.

“I just crumpled,” she said. “It was excruciating pain.”

Her orthopedic surgeon, Missoula physician Michael Schutte, was on his way to a Grizzly football game but made time to look at her knee.

“He said, ‘Krista, you tore your ACL (knee ligament). This is the end of your season,’ ” she said.

In surgery, Schutte made Redpath a new ACL from her own patellar tendon.

	"Krista's case illustrates what is achievable," said Dr. Schutte while examining her leg

The 21-year-old Redpath went through seven months of rehabilitation, working two hours a day, five or six days a week.

“At that point, basketball was a very important part of my life,” she said. “I was worried I wouldn’t get back to that level.”

Seven months and two weeks later, Schutte said Redpath could play basketball. Four days later, during a four-on-four pickup game, her knee gave out.

“My patellar tendon just failed,” she said. “The surgery was perfect. He (Schutte) did everything for me and more. I did all the rehab. I was just that 1 percent.”

Schutte suggested an ACL from a donor this time. He could use her other patellar tendon, he told her, but that would mean another long rehab of both knees.

Unlike organs, most donated tissues and bone have no waiting list; they can be stored, frozen, for five to seven years, said Steve McLean, the public information manager for the Northwest Tissue Services. The Tissue Services, which located a donated ACL for Redpath, is a division of the Puget Sound Blood Center in Seattle. Schutte and Redpath simply set a surgery date.

With the season’s practice set to begin Sept. 15, Redpath had the surgery July 3.

“It was just basically a lot less strenuous,” she said. “I walked out of the surgery center after the surgery. I was on an exercise bike the next morning. If anybody asks me, I tell everybody to choose the tissue.”

Redpath rehabbed hours and hours a day for a shot at one more basketball season. On Nov. 1, she was able to play, back in a starting position. On Nov. 17, she played a tough game against Nebraska, knee in a brace. Everything worked.

That year, the Lady Griz went all the way to the NCAA tournament. And Redpath earned a master’s degree in political science.

“One thing my knee did was make me realize basketball wasn’t everything,” she said. “School became really important to me.”

At the end of the year, Redpath’s agent, Jean McNulty-King, got her a spot with a team in the Elite Division in Denmark, and Redpath left in August 2000 to play pro ball in a place where nobody knew about her knee.

She taught at an international school and played basketball for a year. Her knee felt it, but it held up.

Now back home in Montana, Redpath works for Pyron and does post-game radio analysis of Lady Griz games for KGVO Radio. She does most everything except downhill skiing - biking, running, walking, cross-country skiing - and three days a week she takes yoga classes.

“I was always really tight in my hips, and I didn’t have great flexibility,” she said. “In yoga, you build strength. And that helps my knee.”

She also has the courage to wear heels now, too, which can boost her 6-foot height even higher.

Sometimes, she thinks about the person whose ligament is in her own knee now.

“I’m thankful, more than anything,” she said. “I’m very thankful.
“The Living Legacy is so important. I’m willing to talk about this anytime, anywhere. I want people to know the resources out there and the experiences I’ve had.”

Redpath carries a donor designation on her own driver’s license. So do Mary Hainlin and her daughter, who is 20 now.

“I just think that everybody should want to (donate) when there comes a time,” she said. “I wish that nobody would think twice about it.”

Understanding and caring “I was very fortunate,“ said Krista Redpath, “because I don’t think I would have made it if Dr. Schutte hadn’t done both surgeries.” Her assessment has been a common one in Missoula for quite a while. From the time Michael J. Schutte, M.D., arrived in Montana nearly 20 years ago, he has been known not only for his ability as a surgeon, but also for the care he gives his patients. As Redpath noted, “I needed someone who understood the athlete’s perspective…the competitiveness and the drive we have.” As a former collegiate wrestler at Lousiana State University, Dr. Schutte understood. For all of his patients — athletes or not — he knows what the best surgical solutions are. And for the past decade, he has turned to Northwest Tissue Services. “I chose the Tissue Services because it has a recognized reputation for excellence,” said Dr. Schutte. “Industry-wide, there’s disparity in the rigorous attention to detail needed in recovering tissue, but Northwest Tissue Services tops the list of quality tissue banks. I’ve had very successful results in using its allografts with my patients.” The New Orleans native has had success all around: he’s a longtime partner at Northern Rockies Orthopaedics doing what he loves, has a happy family – wife M.J., daughter Morgan and son Ryan – and lives “in a great place to raise our kids. That’s why I’m here.”