Reality Sets In : Blindness Dims Couple’s Postoperative Optimism

MISSION VIEJO —  Randall Curlee opened his front door to a red setting sun he appeared not to see. Neighbors had rushed home from work and were standing in their driveways, chatting about the big game, which Curlee wouldn’t be watching.

“I’m glad I’m not a fan,” he said, referring to college basketball’s national championship, its cheers and sighs drifting down from an upstairs television. “Right now, I couldn’t see it anyway. I’ve gone temporarily blind.”

Curlee’s blindness was brought on by advanced diabetes, which he hoped his nationally publicized kidney transplant might somehow improve. He and his new wife, Victoria Ingram-Curlee, made headlines in November when her left kidney was sewn into Curlee’s pelvic area.

The couple’s wedding in a San Diego hospital a month before was covered live by network morning shows that trumpeted the story as a kind of storybook romance come true.

After the successful surgery, their expectations soared. But reality has turned out to be something less than the stuff of fairy tales.

While Curlee’s ruddy face has a healthier glow, and his balding head is sprouting new hair for the first time in years--and, yes, he has a greatly improved kidney function--his life is anything but one of comfort and ease. His current blindness was triggered by a hemorrhaging of the retinas, which is not uncommon to diabetics.

The condition set in suddenly, fiercely, last weekend, and while he prays the darkness is only temporary, his wife has resigned herself to believing that one day he may be permanently blind.

“I constantly pray for the ability to understand,” said Ingram-Curlee, who, like her husband, is 46. “When I really realized he was blind, I didn’t want to believe it. Now, I have to be his Seeing Eye dog as well. I have to drive him wherever he needs to go. I have to work around that, and my own life is very busy.

“It scares me,” she said with a sigh. “I wonder, ‘Can I financially hold us up?’ Absolutely, but it’s going to be a tough road, with a lot of stress. In addition to the blindness, he had an episode of insulin shock just last week. And it was frustrating, because--again--it brought home the realization that giving him the kidney didn’t take care of everything.”

Did she expect it would?

“Yes,” she said sadly. “Absolutely.”

Curlee’s diabetes, which surfaced in his teen-age years, has caused him to suffer bouts of blindness before, as well as a heart attack requiring open-heart surgery. Before the transplant, his kidney function was so impaired that doctors believed dialysis would offer little relief.

Since receiving his wife’s kidney, he went back to work as marketing director for a Costa Mesa audio company; he even completed a job-related sojourn to Paris without complications.

But in addition to taking insulin at least twice daily, he takes three gruelingly intense anti-rejection drugs whose side effects have extended to his wife.

“They’re mood-altering,” Ingram-Curlee said of the sharp anger the medications sometimes arouse. “So, he takes it out on me a lot. I have to stand in there and say, ‘I will not tolerate this.’ ”

Elizabeth Catton, the transplant coordinator at Sharp Memorial Hospital in San Diego, where the surgery was performed, counseled the Curlees about the pros and cons of such a delicate procedure.

While the story did contain happily-ever-after elements, fueled by the Curlees themselves--whom Catton calls “wonderful personalities, vivacious, intelligent people who captured the heart of America”--she said it’s important to remember the stark reality that such a measure represents.

“Transplantation is a treatment option--not a cure,” Catton said. “It’s hard to separate that out, especially when people feel so good initially. Problems that existed prior to the surgery won’t go away, and there are no guarantees. There are pros and very definite cons.”

Dr. Robert Mendez, who performed the transplant, said the couple’s story has inspired several spousal-organ donations nationwide, including a recent transplant involving a San Diego couple at UC San Diego Medical Center.

“They made a tremendous impact on the field,” Mendez said of the Curlees. “Their act made it well-known that spousal donation is an acceptable and available avenue,” should the donor’s kidney be compatible with the recipient’s.

Diabetics are more prone to retinal hemorrhages, Mendez said, “because their vessels are so fragile.” New laser treatments have reduced the complications, as have transplants.

But neither is a guarantee.

Despite trying times, Ingram-Curlee believes wholeheartedly in the practice of relatives and friends donating organs to relatives and friends. She sees it as a cause, one she and Curlee have championed on “The Phil Donahue Show” and “48 Hours” and plan to further publicize in an upcoming book.

“I would do it all again,” she said, “because he was dying. He’s human again. He’s got a lot more energy. He has the red glow of health, and I gave him an extended life expectancy. That was really important. What a gift it is to be able to do that.

“But that doesn’t mean that life will suddenly be easy. I realized at church on Sunday that I was very sad about this, that it’s not fair . . . this blindness, these other problems. But it’s something I have to deal with. I’m more determined than ever to get deeply into work--to stay successful. I can’t just kick back and relax; I can’t have a life of leisure.

“I was hoping that, with having a new kidney, things like this wouldn’t be happening. But, clearly, there are still some issues.”

Nevertheless, the issues are confined to Curlee’s diabetes and not to the transplant itself, which caused Ingram-Curlee three weeks of pain. She still has a 15-inch scar from an incision that led to the breaking of a rib--a necessity in such procedures--and to the removal of three layers of back muscle. Ingram-Curlee, who works as a Mission Viejo real estate agent, went back to work almost immediately.

“People fear the unknown,” she said. “We’re hoping to remove those fears of the unknown. People think it’s going to be painful, or, ‘I’ll never have my life back again,’ or it’s the ultimate sacrifice. But really, is it?”

For now, however, Curlee clings to the hope that medication, new surgery or time will eliminate not only his blindness but also his No. 1 enemy--diabetes. At the moment, a new kidney is doing everything it can.