UW Health celebrates 60 years of transplant program with patients, donors and families

MADISON, Wis. (WMTV) - UW Health celebrated six decades of organ transplantation and living donation Sunday, bringing together transplant recipients, donors, families and health care professionals at the Alliant Energy Center.

The UW Health Transplant Center began performing kidney transplants in 1966. Since then, the program has grown to include multiple types of organ transplantation while advances in medicine have changed what is possible for patients.

For transplant recipient Mary Baliker, that progress is personal.

Baliker said she was diagnosed with kidney disease when she was nine years old. At the time, she said dialysis and transplantation were not commonly available for children, and her parents were told she had about six months to live.

But as Baliker got older, treatment options changed.

“By the time I was 17 years old, I always say medical science caught up,” Baliker said.

Her brother decided to be tested as a potential kidney donor and turned out to be an identical match. Baliker received her first transplant from him nearly 47 years ago.

“I’m here today because transplant works,” Baliker said. “And I’m living a healthy, normal life, and my brother’s here celebrating as well.”

Baliker said her brother has also continued to live a healthy life after becoming a living donor.

She has watched transplant medicine continue to change in the decades since her first procedure, including improvements that have made some aspects of donation and recovery less invasive.

Baliker said people should not automatically assume they are unable to become living donors because of their age or other health concerns.

“Don’t make the decision yourself,” Baliker said. “Always talk to the transplant team, because there’s still opportunity, oftentimes, to be a donor that you might not even know.”

For Baliker, the program’s 60th anniversary is more than a medical milestone. She said UW Health and its transplant program have been a major part of her life, first as a patient and later through more than 20 years working at UW Hospital.

“I’m grateful that I’ve seen the change and opportunities that transplant has given me but has given so many the chance to have that second gift of life,” Baliker said.

UW Health’s anniversary celebration was free and open to the community, with activities throughout the afternoon honoring transplant recipients, living donors, deceased organ donors and their families and the health care professionals involved in transplant care.

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