Doctor-to-doctor donation: Kidney saves sick colleague

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. -- It's not unusual for a surgeon to save another doctor's life.

But Dr. Colleen Coleman did so by going under the knife to help an ailing colleague who desperately needed a kidney.

Coleman donated to Dr. Brian Dunn, an anesthesiologist she works with at Hoag Hospital Newport Beach whose kidneys failed from chemotherapy he received as a teenager to treat a stomach tumor.

Coleman came through after one donor withdrew her offer and Dunn's doctor advised him against accepting a kidney from a patient with Lou Gehrig's disease.

"I thought, 'It's not going to happen,'" Dunn told The Orange County Register.

He had received a kidney from his mother when he was 25, but donated kidneys don't last forever. In late 2015, his health was failing, and he could hardly keep pace with his young daughter.

"I started dragging," he said. "Holy crap, I felt bad."

He started dialysis in April and needed to go through the process four times a day to purify his blood. He referred to the time-consuming and tiring process as his prison.

Coleman's intervention also almost didn't happen after an initial screening erroneously said she wasn't a match. Only after the testing company called back in June to say it made a mistake did Coleman learn she was a match.

Her initial eagerness to help was tempered with second thoughts and fears until she considered Dunn's 6-year-old daughter.

Coleman's grandmother had died of kidney failure when her mother was a 6-year-old girl. "I didn't want his daughter to grow up without a dad," Coleman said.