Tomi Roinila

Tomi Roinila is a hardy Finn, a hockey player and rarely one to ask for help.

So it's fortunate that when Tomi, a diabetic, needed help the most, he didn't have to search it out. Help came to him.

Facing renal failure and told by doctors in Grand Forks, N.D., that he needed a kidney transplant within six to 12 months, 41-year-old Tomi quickly heard from friends and relatives, all willing to donate a kidney to the man known as a superb husband, outstanding father and devoted hockey fan and coach.

Tomi's sister-in-law, Grace Roinila, was the first among the group to be tested and, after a battery of tests in her home state of New York and follow-up tests at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, she was found to be a match.

Again, fate was working in Tomi's favor. Mayo doctors initially thought his transplant could wait until August or September of 2004, but in July he was told dialysis was necessary if the transplant wasn't done immediately. Grace flew to Rochester on July 1, and on July 6 the Roinilas were wheeled into adjoining operating rooms for successful surgeries.

"One thing I've noticed about Mayo that I haven't seen anywhere else is that the staff seems genuinely concerned about people," Tomi says. "They do their job very well. The people make the place as good as it is."

Tomi says he selected Mayo Clinic for his transplant after extensive research, deciding he "didn't want to take second best."

"I wanted to go to the place that would give me the best service, and I'd heard a lot of good things about Mayo," Tomi says. "I strongly believe after having been there that I wouldn't go anywhere else."

Mayo's kidney transplant program is the busiest in Minnesota, says Michael B. Ishitani, M.D., Tomi's surgeon, and is the largest in the country for live kidney transplants — meaning the recipient's donated kidney is from a living person, rather than from a cadaver.

Mayo also stands out among other medical centers as a leader in laparoscopic donor nephrectomy, a procedure in which a donor's kidney is removed through a small incision. The laparoscopic procedure is considered safer for the donor than other procedures and allows donors to recover faster and with less pain.

About 18 million people in the United States live with diabetes. Roughly half of diabetics develop kidney failure in their lifetime, and a preemptive transplant is a common diagnosis for a patient who has severely decreased kidney function without chance of recovery.

A computer draftsman from Emerado, N.D., Tomi has been diabetic since age 16. He was told in his late 30s that a transplant would be necessary if his kidney function continued to decrease.

By winter of 2004, Tomi "knew something was wrong. I wasn't myself anymore." He continued to work, but was fatigued and weary.

It didn't take long for the news to spread in his small town that Tomi needed a kidney transplant.

Friends offered to be donors, as did relatives, including Grace, his older brother's wife. After undergoing testing to determine if she was a match, the families were told in June that she was.

"I was surprised and happy and thankful that Grace was willing to do this," Tomi said. "I don't feel comfortable asking for that kind of assistance, so it's good that she and other people offered."

Their surgeries on July 6 went well, and the next day the two were together walking the halls of Mayo Clinic's Methodist Hospital. Grace went home within a few days, while Tomi stayed in Rochester for a month after surgery before returning home to wife Cheryl and sons, Jari, 11, and Matti, 15.

Tomi says his energy level is heightened since surgery and he's enjoying time back on the ice with his sons.

Hockey is the family's passion.

"I feel good," he says. "Now I'm back coaching hockey again and skating with the boys once in a while, enjoying life like I should."

As for Grace, she calls the chance to be a kidney donor an outstanding life experience, one she cherishes for the gift she gave her brother-in-law.

"Being able to help him is the greatest thing ever,"

Grace says. "It's like giving him years of life and when I think of it in that way, I feel so blessed."