November 20, 2009
DON'T MESS WITH LITTLE BROTHER
Huntersville’s Josephine Schaffhauser has already protected her younger brother. This week, she’s giving him a kidney.
by John Deem/Lake Norman Citizen
Big sisters look out for little brothers. It’s just what they do. 
It’s what Josephine Schaffhauser did back at Washington Street Elementary School on Long Island, N.Y. When Josephine found out some boys planned to beat up her brother, Tommy, she didn’t take kindly to his being threatened. Josephine was in the sixth grade. Tommy, her only sibling, was a fourth grader.
“He was always kind of big,” Josephine recalls, “so he got picked on a lot.”
It’s also why the plot involved three boys taking on Tommy in the school courtyard. “Not a very smart plan,” she says, “since the courtyard was surrounded on three sides by windows.”
Of course, bullies aren’t always known for their intellect. So, what did Josephine do with the inside information? “Let’s just say the fight never happened,” she says with a smile.
Nearly three decades later, Josephine, now 40, is still trying to keep bad things from happening to her 38-year-old brother. Or, at least to keep bad things from getting worse. It isn’t three bullies taunting Tommy today. Instead, it’s three hours of daily dialysis.
“It knocks the hell out of him,” Josephine says.
Tommy’s kidneys are failing, but Josephine is not about to let her brother lose this fight, either. If everything goes as planned Friday at New York City’s Presbyterian Hospital, surgeons will make four incisions on one side of Josephine’s abdomen. Two of the cuts will accommodate surgical instruments, one will allow the insertion of a small camera to guide the surgeons, and the fourth will be the window through which doctors will remove one of Josephine’s kidneys, which they then will transplant into Tommy.
Josephine Schaffhauser will experience something few of us could imagine. She’s sharing a part of herself — quite literally.
Big sisters look out for little brothers. It’s just what they do.
‘Of course it was me’
Josephine, her husband, Peter, and their twin daughters, Samantha and Jessica, moved to Huntersville from New York two years ago. “We didn’t want both of us working anymore,” Josephine says. A lower cost of living has allowed Josephine to be a stay-at-home mom to the twins, who will be 4 years old in January, and to the Schaffhausers’ son, Peter Jr., who will be 2 in January.
Tommy, still on Long Island with a wife and four kids, and with a wholesale tire company to run, began undergoing dialysis treatment four years ago. His doctors still aren’t sure what caused his kidneys to fail, Josephine says. What they are certain about is that Tommy won’t live without a new one.
When doctors decided this past summer to move ahead with a transplant, the first step was to find a suitable donor. Josephine volunteered to be tested for compatibility, as did a few people outside the family.
From that moment until today, Josephine has approached the process with a kind of no-nonsense attitude that makes the whole thing seem barely worth mentioning. Her brother needs a kidney. She has two of them. End of discussion.
“At the time I just said, ‘If it’s me, it’s me,’” she recalls. “But Tommy said from the beginning that he hoped it was me.”
As it turns out, it was her.
“I’m his sister,” she says. “Of course it was me.”
And if Josephine was going to give her brother the internal organ to save his life, she was going to do it right. After peppering Josephine with questions to assess her own health, Tommy’s doctors told her she should lose 20 pounds before the surgery, which was just two months away.
“So far, I’ve lost 30, just to be sure,” she says matter-of-factly.
And sure enough, as Josephine sits in the concourse at Huntersville Family Fitness and Aquatics Center after back-to-back “Body Attack” and stationary bike spinning classes, an older couple, also from New York, passes by.
“You’re melting like butter!” the woman tells Josephine, whose smile hints that maybe losing 30 pounds is a big deal.
The risks of the surgery — infection, pneumonia, heart attack or stroke, damage to other organs — are not a big deal, or at least they don’t seem to be for Josephine.
“I’m fine,” she said last Saturday, one day before leaving for New York. “I don’t get nervous. … Actually, it’s almost like a vacation, going back to see family.”
Some vacation. Doctors told Josephine she will be hospitalized five to seven days, but she says she just wants to get in and out so she can get back home to her kids. If all goes well, Tommy will stay in the hospital for about a month, and walk out with a healthy kidney for the first time in years.
He’ll also carry a piece of Josephine, still protecting him like she did back on Long Island when they were kids.
Big sisters look out for little brothers.
It’s just what they do.
About Huntersville Family Fitness & Aquatics (HFFA):
Huntersville Family Fitness & Aquatics is about family, fitness and fun. Dedicated HFFA staffers produce an exciting variety of programs and partnerships that connect the community and enable members to experience and achieve the most in health, wellness, and total fitness. Built in 2001, the 88,000-square-foot HFFA facility features state-of-the-art aquatic and fitness components, including a 50-meter pool, a 25-yard warm water pool, an outdoor family fun pool, full-court gymnasium, complete fitness center, and group exercise studio. As the only public facility in the Southeast with an Olympic-sized, 50-meter competition pool and 10-meter dive tower, HFFA regularly hosts aquatics events with up to 2,000 spectators for regional, national, and international swim and dive competitions. For more information, please call (704) 766-2222 or visit www.hffa.com.
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