New Kidney, New Life For School Of Dentistry Alumna
LaToya Colenberg-Eakins’ little dog, Deucebug, might have to take a break from crawling into bed with her every night.
“He’s going to be so sad,” Colenberg-Eakins (DMD 11) says. Her pug won’t be the only one who will miss out on a favorite ritual. Colenberg-Eakins no longer can enjoy venison.
“No wildlife,” she says. “And my husband is a big-time hunter.”
The tradeoff, however, is a no-brainer. In January, Colenberg-Eakins turned her back on seven years of dialysis when she received a new kidney at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.
She lost a little. She gained so much.
“My incision hurts, but I feel awesome,” Colenberg-Eakins, whose dental practice spans three cities, said less than 24 hours after her surgery. “With dialysis, you feel so heavy. Now, I feel light. It’s weird. I’m hurting, but I feel so great.”
Dr. Mark Earl, assistant professor of transplant surgery, performed the procedure.
“Her kidney function is outstanding,” he said the day before her scheduled release. “She’s right on track. End-stage renal disease patients who receive a transplant live longer and have a better quality of life generally than those who remain on dialysis.”
The Pearl resident’s journey to a kidney transplant began when she was diagnosed at age 13 with focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, a serious disease that usually leads to kidney failure. In her second year of dental school, her kidneys failed completely, and she began the rigors of dialysis five days a week.
The dialysis caused a temporary interruption in her classes and her pursuit of a longtime dream: to practice dentistry in Mississippi’s rural communities.
“In Fayette, there are no dentists – no one in general practice,” she says of the town where she grew up.
Because their teeth were decayed and neglected, people ended up with extractions.
“If they’d gotten earlier care, that wouldn’t have happened,” she says. “I want them not only to have healthy teeth but to look better.”
That comes from personal experience.
As a young girl, “I hated my teeth. I had a bunch of spacing issues,” says Colenberg-Eakins, now 31. “People thought I was an angry person because I didn’t smile. I got braces and a lot of reconstructive surgery, and that transformed me.”
A dental school rotation at the Jackson-Hinds Comprehensive Health Center locked in her decision to pass up an often-lucrative dental practice in a more urban area.
“I’d ask a patient, ‘How long has your tooth been hurting?’ They’d say, ‘Ten years.’”
She returned to her roots, now practicing full time at the Claiborne County Family Health Center and working part time for a Jackson dental practice that also has an office in Hattiesburg. And as she became more exhausted, both from her disease and constant travel, she made it onto three kidney transplant waiting lists, the most recent a year ago in Mississippi.
“My daily routine has been to get up, drive to work, haul home and get on dialysis for three hours, sit up for 30 minutes to make sure I’m not bleeding, go to sleep, and the next day do it all over again,” she says. “I would normally get to bed at midnight or 1. I had to plan everything.”
“It’s a big challenge for the overwhelming majority of patients just to manage their dialysis at home, much less be a busy professional,” Earl says. “That is incredible.”
The chance for Colenberg-Eakins to get a kidney transplant came early on a Sunday morning as her parents were driving to the church where her father, the Rev. Anthony Charles Colenberg, is a pastor in Natchez. A weary Colenberg-Eakins was in bed.
“I almost missed the call. I had my phone on silent. I just happened to look at it,” Colenberg-Eakins says.
Her dad was the alternate contact. He fielded a call, then told his wife. “We turned around and came back,” Betty Colenberg says. “I’ve had a bag packed all this time.”
That night, Colenberg-Eakins says her new life kicked in.
“It’s a feeling to be in end-stage kidney disease, and it’s gone.”
There hasn’t been time for Colenberg-Eakins and her husband, Elbert Eakins Jr., to talk about how life will change. She’s relieved that her husband and mother no longer must be her “dialysis partners,” with one of them present as a condition of home treatment.
“I look forward to not having to plan it into my day,” she says. “I look forward to just being free.”
This story was reprinted with permission from the Ole Miss Alumni Review. The Alumni Review is published quarterly for members of the Ole Miss Alumni Association. Join or renew your membership with the Alumni Association today, and don’t miss a single issue.
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