Record South Whidbey
SATURDAY, JUNE 16, 2012 | Vol. 88, No. 48 | www.SOUTHWHIDBEYRECORD.com | 75¢
INSIDE: Bird is the word, Island Life, A10
Two old friends share long wait for kidney transplant BY PATRICIA DUFF Staff reporter
FREELAND — You’re never too old for a kidney. That’s what doctors told Freeland resident Ivan Little when he went from being fit all of his life to suffering from kidney failure in the fall of last year. Failure occurs when the kidneys are no longer able to provide waste removal functions for the body. Little is 79 and must visit the Davita Dialysis Center in Oak Harbor three times per week to stay alive. He shares this routine with his old friend from Langley High School, Lloyd Furman, a former mayor of Langley, whose kidney failure happened over a period of eight years. It came on unexpectedly for Little, who said the feeling of exhaustion kept him from his daily routine. “I couldn’t do anything,” Little said. “I couldn’t mow the grass, I could barely walk. I was anemic and short of breath. It was awful. You have this feeling that you wish you would die because it would be easier,” he said. After the renal failure was diagnosed and he started dialysis, Little said he started feeling “really good.” But, although he and his good
Patricia Duff / The Record
Lloyd Furman and Ivan Little take a moment for a photo in Freeland. The longtime friends from South Whidbey both are on a kidney donation waiting list. friend Furman are glad to have a life sustaining dialysis center on the island, they both hope to find a donated kidney. The only
treatment options for kidney failure are dialysis or a kidney transplant. “Everybody’s got two kidneys
and one kidney is all you need,” Furman said. “If you’ve got two good kidneys then you can donate one. One kidney is adequate for
life,” he added, though Furman admitted that he doesn’t quite know how one goes about asking someone for a kidney. Furman and Little are wellversed in what it takes to receive a kidney from a donor. They are both on the waiting list at the University of Washington Medicine Kidney Care and Transplant Program, one of the best in the country. The program is part of the National Kidney Registry, the largest national living donor exchange program that includes a network of more than 20 institutions. “You have to have a matching blood type and then there are five or six markers in the blood, and you have to match three or four of those,” Furman said. Furman’s blood type is A+ and Little’s is type A, both common. “I’ve been on that list for two years,” Furman said. Furman had to wait a year to get on the list after having open heart surgery and a valve replacement. “You can’t have had two major operations within a year of getting on the list,” Furman said. There is a shorter waiting time for living donor kidney transplantation. However, patients being See Transplant, A6
South Whidbey schools aim to improve test scores, image BY BEN WATANABE Staff reporter
LANGLEY — Enrollment, funding, staffing and test scores all need to improve in the South Whidbey School District, principals and board members agreed. The five principals and superintendent reported their efforts to improve the district and achieve its mission and goals of “career and college ready” students. Until this year’s test scores are released in August, the principals told the school board about the work and programs their staffs initiated to increase standardized test scores like the district writing assessment, end of course exams, high school
proficiency exams and measurements of student progress, which replaced the WASL a few years ago. The low scores that proved worrisome from last year will improve in time, said District Superintendent Jo Moccia. “It’s a process,” she said. In addition to test scores, at least one district parent expressed her concern about the image of Bayview School. South Whidbey’s alternative high school is being closed and consolidated to the South Whidbey Primary Campus, where it will be a kindergarten through 12th grade alternative school with a new name: South Whidbey Academy. Miriam Coates urged Moccia and the board to craft a new identity for
the new school, one apart from the stigma attached to its predecessor, as a place for students who smoke during passing period and on-thecusp dropouts. “The district has to get a handle on the face of the new academy,” Coates said. The school district has worked to redefine the culture at its only alternative school. New brochures have been printed, Moccia said, but some of its history, like the historic Bayview school bell, will live on at the new location. “We have done a lot of work rebranding that school,” Moccia said. “We still have to allow See Scores, A20
Ben Watanabe / The Record
South Whidbey School Board Member Jill Engstrom listens to Bayview School Director David Pfeiffer during an update of the school’s improvement plans.