Manassas Park Kidney Transplant Patient, Diabetic Talks Health: "Wake Up"

Manassas Park resident Richard Krafsig has experienced more health problems than the average 47-year-old man.

Diabetes. High blood pressure. Dual kidney failure as well as skin cancer and a heart attack are just a few of the things the father of four has endured.

At the moment, he’s in Chicago recovering from a risky robotic kidney transplant surgery done on March 1 at University of Illinois Hospital. 

Hospitals closer to home like Johns Hopkins University refused to do the surgery because he is obese, Krafsig said. At one point, he weighed 500 pounds.

After all his health problems. Krafsig said he has a message for people who suffer from preventive conditions: wake up.

“Men especially, I feel like shaking them and saying, ‘wake up! You are not invincible,’” he said. “My desire is to see someone take their health more seriously. It caught up with me, fast and furiously and it didn’t warn me that it was on its way.”

, is trying to increase awareness about the return on investment on public health services, including prevention efforts.

“The reason why I am where I am is because I was diagnosed with diabetes and high blood pressure right around the time I was married in 1995,” he said. “I did take the drugs, but what I would is say, ‘Hey I want a piece of cheesecake so I’ll just give myself more insulin.’”

He considered gastric bypass but it wasn’t for him, in part because studies show bypass patients have a high rate of alcoholism post operation, he said. 

“You’ve probably heard this before but you’re addicted to food and that’s how I was most of my life,” he said. “The idea is, (after gastric bypass) you just transfer that obsession to something else.”

As a child he battled secret eating, Krafsig said.

But after drinking protein shakes and seeing a nutritionist as an adult, he was able to lose 217 pounds in about 18 months, he said.

Things were looking up health wise until about five years ago when he discovered he was in kidney failure.

“We all handled it pretty well. I took responsibility. I said, ‘this is only what it is because of what I’ve done, ” he said.  “It all could have been prevented and I choose not to.”

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Krafsig chose peritoneal dialysis to treat his kidney failure until he could receive a new organ.  This type of dialysis is done four times a day for about an hour each time, but it allowed him to keep working, he said. 

“… there were times when I’ll be driving down the (Capital) Beltway, doing dialysis,” he said. “I’ll have it hanging from the laundry hook in my van.”

After a little less than two years, his doctors felt that type of dialysis wasn’t completely clearing his blood of toxins. So after that, he was forced to go on disability.

He knew he would need a kidney transplant, but Krafsig said he still weighed too much for many hospitals to perform the surgery, because of the risk of infection at the site of the incision.

For example Johns Hopkins University requires a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 38 percent or less. At the time, his BMI was very close to 50 percent, Krafsig said.

Then, his wife, Elizabeth, came across an article about the University of Illinois in Chicago being the only hospital in the world that performed the De Vinci robotic surgery on obese patients needing kidney transplants. With robotic surgery, the risk of infection is less because the incision smaller, Krafsig said.

After searching for a kidney, Krafsig said they found a donor in his cousin John, who is related to him by marriage and not by blood.

The couple was all set to go to Chicago for the surgery, but it had to be postponed after his wife noticed a suspicious spot on his face.

That spot turned out to be melanoma, a deadly form of skin cancer.

The cancer was in its early stages and doctors were able to treat it in time for his surgery this month.

Despite the diligent work by an excellent team of caregivers; Krafsig said he wasn’t completely out of the woods; complications from the surgery led to his having a heart attack a few weeks ago. 

“It was an intense pain,” he said. “I haven’t cried from pain since I was a little boy.”

Though doctors thought his diabetes went away with his weight loss, Krafsig said he’s back on insulin because of the steroid medication he takes in addition to some 20 different oral medications.

Krafsig said his doctors in Chicago have been in touch with his doctors in Northern Virginia about continuing his post-operative care. He hopes to return to Manassas Park on April 17.