Patricia Altman

Patricia Altman was about to sit down to dinner with her family on Oct. 6 when she got the call that she was receiving a donor kidney for transplant. Through her tears, she texted her daughter, "they have a kidney for me and want me at the hospital!"

Not only did the 62-year-old grandmother from Keller get a life-saving kidney transplant, she also has the distinction of being the 100th patient transplanted at Medical City Fort Worth's Transplant Institute since their transplant program's inception in November 2012. MCFW's kidney transplant program is one of the fastest growing programs in Texas.

"A lot of people have been praying for me to get a transplant," Altman said. "God's been with me through all of this. I'm a miracle just to be alive because I almost died in 2012 and 2013."

It has been a long road for Altman to get her transplant. She was first diagnosed with renal failure in 2012 and has been on dialysis since that time. About a year ago, she became a patient of the Fort Worth Transplant Institute at Medical City Fort Worth. In late August, she was placed on the transplant list. About two months later, she got her transplant.

Altman and her family joke that the third time is the charm. The first and second times she was alerted that there might be a donor kidney for her, the organ ended up going to another recipient. But the third call was the one — she got the kidney and underwent a successful transplant procedure.

"Our kidney transplant program has excellent outcomes," said transplant nephrologist Sridhar Allam, M.D., who is the Medical Director for the Fort Worth Transplant Institute at Medical City Fort Worth. "Wait time for a kidney transplant at Plaza is 6.9 months, which is significantly shorter than the national average of greater than 72 months. In addition, Medical City Fort Worth's program has 100 percent post-transplant, one-year graft and patient survival rates, according to the last report of the Scientific Registry of Transplant recipients."

For more information about kidney transplantation or becoming a kidney donor, contact the Fort Worth Transplant Institute at Medical City Fort Worth at (817) 834-8500.