Tim Andrews knew that he needed dialysis to manage his end-stage kidney disease, but over months of treatment, he started to wonder whether it was worth it. He was exhausted and hopeless. He missed his grandkids.
It kept him alive, but it didn’t feel like living.
Desperate for another option, he found a surprising alternative: an organ from a pig.
Andrews, 67, is a pioneer of a new kind of medicine. In January, he had an experimental cross-species transplant of a kidney from a genetically modified pig. He is one of only a handful of patients who have undergone the experimental procedure. For now, he’s the lone person in the United States known to be living with a pig kidney.
Andrews knew that there was a risk to trying something so new, but if the kidney gave him just one more day free from dialysis, it was worth it — for him and for fellow patients.
‘Pick a box’
Andrews had been living with diabetes since the 1990s, managing the condition with insulin. About 2½ years ago, he went to the doctor feeling unusually tired. Tests showed that he had stage 3 kidney failure — his kidneys were still working but less efficiently than they should. He was relieved to learn that it was manageable with medication, monitoring and lifestyle changes.
But about a month later, a doctor delivered more bad news: Andrews’ kidney disease had rapidly progressed to end-stage disease. Dialysis was the only option to keep him alive until he could get an organ transplant.
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