Former radio host's query: How do you ask for a kidney? By Laurie Roberts - The Arizona Republic

NOTE:  Many of you remember Bob Mohan from KFYI & KFNX and his popular 'Blow Out The Phones' segments.  Bob is in need of a kidney transplant.  Our prayers go to Bob & his wife Linda!  Laurie Roberts did an article on this, Barry Young discussed this on his show yesterday:


November 03, 2010


It begins each morning with a series of checklists.


There are clamps to be maneuvered - red, green, yellow, blue and white. There are tubes to be primed and pressures to be set - arterial and venous. And there are needles to be carefully, carefully placed.




If all goes well, Bob Mohan gets to live another day.


"All right, let's rock and roll," he says, as they finish the final checks and his wife, Lynda, prepares to open a line and let his blood flow out.

If you've been around Arizona for long, you likely know Mo. For more than 16 years, he hosted a talk-radio show on KFYI-AM (550), blistering the airwaves with fiery broadsides and his signature, "Blow out the phones," before leaving in 2002.

Now the man with the golden tongue finds himself almost at a loss for words at a time when he most needs them.

Mohan has polycystic kidney disease, a genetic disorder that causes your kidneys to fail. Usually it happens in your 30s or 40s. For Mohan, 73, it is happening now. Earlier this year, he noticed signs his kidneys were failing, but he put off dialysis. By June, Mohan had a choice.

It was the machine or die.


Mohan seriously considered Option No. 2. He's an independent sort, used to going where he wants, when he wants. The idea of being chained to a machine was inconceivable. But his wife of 47 years convinced him that you never give up on life, not when you are otherwise healthy, not when you have grandchildren to see into college and beyond.


And so he began dialysis, five days a week, three hours a day. He and Lynda underwent training to learn how to clean his blood at home. The routine is not for the squeamish and it has taken its toll, physically and emotionally.

"Try to imagine sitting here with me right now and knowing that tomorrow I'll be doing the same thing and the next day I'm going to have to do the same thing and the day after that," he says. "I think a lot of the joy of life is anticipating things, and my anticipation quotient has been reduced because I have this over my head all the time."

Mohan is on the list for a kidney transplant, but he's not holding his breath. Last year, 114 Arizonans donated one or more organs upon their deaths, according to Kris Patterson of the Donor Network of Arizona. Meanwhile, 1,462 Arizonans are waiting for a kidney.


So Mohan has decided to go looking for one, not only for him but for others who like him aren't lucky enough to have a family member who can donate. The problem: Where do you look? And how do you ask?

"How do you go and say, 'Can I have your kidney?'" he says. "I've looked at friends and I say, 'I need a kidney.' . . . It's amazing how your popularity kind of droops down a little bit."

Mohan, whose blood is Type O, says it's one of the hardest things he's ever had to do but the alternative is to remain tethered to a machine that is both prolonging his life and diminishing it.


So he is forcing himself to do what in the past came so easily: to talk, to ask, to spread the word about the impact one person can have on another's life, by giving up something that they don't need.

Lynn Closway, a spokeswoman for the Mayo Clinic's Transplant Center where Mohan is a patient, says friends, co-workers and strangers have donated kidneys. Half of Mayo's 163 kidney transplants this year have been from living donors, and half of those were from non-relatives.

Last year, a Phoenix taxi driver made international news when he offered his kidney to a woman he drove to dialysis three times a week. Unfortunately, medical issues disqualified him.

Closway says Mayo does extensive testing to ensure that a person who is a blood and tissue match is physically and emotionally able to donate. For information, call Mayo's Transplant Center at 480-342-0904.

Know that people like Mohan are waiting.

"I don't want to die yet," he says. "I've got things I want to do. I want to live. I want to go places, do things. I want to see my grandkids go to college and graduate. I want to go trout fishing. I'm teaching my grandson how to tie flies so that we can go fishing. There are great places in Montana I'd like to take him.

"I just hope there's somebody out there."


Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8635.