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Press Release
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Marin financier, mother of 10 Kit Cole battles kidney failure Gary Klien 04/21/2007 For more than four decades, Kit Cole has nimbly juggled a demanding career in high finance while raising 10 children, organizing community groups, teaching college and leading a Girl Scout troop. And that doesn't count rebuilding her Ross home twice - once after a devastating fire in 1974, again after last year's massive flooding. But now she has been forced to put everything on hold while she faces her greatest challenge yet - figuring out how she will find an O-positive kidney before her time runs out. Cole, 66, learned last month that uncontrolled blood pressure has left her with grave kidney damage. The diagnosis compelled her to step down as executive chairwoman of Epic Bancorp, the San Rafael-based parent company of Tamalpais Bank and Epic Wealth Management, while she researches the intricacies of finding an organ. "I'm like a novice investor here," said Cole, a longtime stockbroker, banker and financial adviser in Marin. "I'm starting from scratch, trying to learn the whole thing. I found out there's thousands of people in this position, and no good way to find kidney donors or whatever they're looking for." The challenges are daunting. Like others who need organ transplants, Cole essentially has two choices: get on the waiting list for a donated organ from someone who has just died, or find a living person willing to donate. According to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, the national database that matches patients to donors, the waiting list for a kidney was 71,314 people long as of Friday evening. The estimated wait time for an O-type kidney is five to six years. Cole, who adopted the infant son of a drug-addicted relative last year, doesn't relish the prospect of spending the next several years on dialysis while she waits for an organ. "If they put a shunt in my arm, I have a baby, and I will not be able to lift him," she said. "He won't be able to understand that." As for finding a living donor, Cole would seem to have an advantage over many patients - a sprawling extended family that includes five adult children, five adult stepchildren and their children. But no one in her family has the right blood type; although people with O-positive blood can donate to anyone, O-positive patients can only receive donations from people with O-positive or O-negative blood. According to the Red Cross, more than 40 percent of the population has type O blood. But Phyllis Weber, chief executive of the California Transplant Donor Network in Oakland, said being O is actually a disadvantage for organ seekers because, statistically, there tend to be more type-O patients on the waiting list. "We've found that patients with blood group O wait longer," said Weber, whose organization works closely with the transplant surgery programs at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, Stanford Medical Center and the University of California, San Francisco. For Cole - who had her five children before she left college and went on to launch a financial consultancy, a savings and loan, a real-estate company and Epic Bancorp - the disease has forced her to do something entirely unnatural for her: slow down. "One of the side effects of kidney failure is fatigue," she said. "What happens is, you keep the same pace, but you exhaust it." In addition to stepping down as executive chairwoman of Epic Bancorp, a company with nearly $1 billion in assets and deposits, Cole also relinquished her post as chairwoman of Tamalpais Bank and declined to seek re-election to the seven-member board of directors. "It's very important that she take the time to focus on her health and her family," said Mark Garwood, president and CEO of Epic Bancorp. "She's always had a lot of energy and drive and focus. That's been one of her strengths. That continues to be one of her strengths. "She still looks great," he added. "I saw her the other day; we went to a ball game together. She's focusing on herself and trying to enjoy life and her very large family. She's always had a great deal of energy and a lot of spunk." Cole is turning some of that energy to educating other patients about the transplant process. With the help of Gary Tobin, a San Rafael publicity consultant , Cole is working to launch a Web site with links to sources of guidance and data. "We're trying to become a conduit of information, being able to refer people to where to get information," Tobin said. "There's a lot of places to go, so we want to make it easier for people. It's kind of a clearinghouse approach. We're trying to make information easily available." Cole, who has been living in her Strawberry Point home because her Ross house still has flood damage, laughed when asked whether she is frightened about her prospects. "Let's say, I have high respect for the unknown at the moment," she said. |