Transplant Center

Patient Testimonials

Kidney Transplant Patient Becomes Gold Medal Winner

After an organ transplant, patients face the road to recovery. Emily Biondi has taken that road at such a brisk pace that she has become a track-and-field athlete since receiving a kidney transplant at the University of Medical Center in 2003. This summer, Emily attended the U.S. Transplant Games in Pittsburgh where she competed as an athlete and sang at the closing ceremony. Read about her experiences below.

Norman Biondi coaching Emily

Read Emily's essay to her father

This summer, nearly five years after her transplant Emily Biondi, 25, of Ellicott City, won five medals at the 2008 U.S. Transplant Games in Pittsburgh, where she also set a won a gold medal and set new world record for the women’s high jump. She also received a silver medal in the 5k, the long jump and a bronze in the 200-meter run. She competed in the games with Team Maryland, who brought back a total of 12 medals

Her father and donor, Norman Biondi, attended the games to coach and cheer his daughter on. “There were tears by me and my dad when I made that record winning high jump! That was two summers worth of training,” she said.

During the Games, which concluded July 16, 2008, transplant recipients from around the nation competed in a variety of athletic events. Sponsored by the National Kidney Foundation, the Games is the only national athletic competition for recipients of all life-saving organ transplants, as well as the largest gathering of transplant recipients and donor families in the world.

Biondi recalled some memorable events from the games:

“During the medal ceremony for the women's 4x100m relay, this man rushed in. He started crying. We wondered what was going on. Then he said...’My son! My son has won the gold medal and the silver medal!’ Apparently his son's heart was received by a woman who ran in the North California Team while the woman who received his lungs ran in our team! So needless to say there were tears by everyone!”

Biondi even had the opportunity to sing to an audience of about 4,000 people at the closing ceremony, which was also on her birthday. “I dedicated my song to two fallen Maryland athletes, one of whose family still came to support the transplant games.”

This is not the first time Emily has competed. In 2007, she won two medals in track and field events at the World Transplant Games in Bangkok, Thailand. And in the summer of 2006, she attended the National Transplant Games with Team Maryland and came home with one gold medal and three silver medals, including a the gold for the long jump. At that time, she was the youngest member of the team and the only one who qualified to go on to the U.S. team for international competition.

It is a testament to the advances in transplant surgery that there is such a thing as an international community of athletes who have received organ transplants and recovered enough to excel and compete in sports.

“The games were very important to me because I got to meet so many other organ transplant recipients who are my age,” said Emily. “It is also important to me to participate in the games to prove to myself that I am not sick anymore.”

Emily's story reinforces that fact that many transplant recipients are able to go on to resume normal lives and achieve great accomplishments.

Women's Relay

“Four years later I feel better than I did before the surgery,” said Biondi. “I am also more athletic and have more endurance than I ever had in my life.”

In fact, Biondi was not a competitive athlete while she was a student at Mount Hebron High School in Ellicott City.

For reasons unknown, Emily was diagnosed kidney failure at the age of 19 while she was attending Florida Southern College, majoring in music and dance.

“I was only 19,” Biondi says. “I couldn’t understand why my kidneys had failed. And neither did any of the doctors,” she said. “A kidney biopsy had only showed scar tissue, leading the doctor’s to believe that the failure was due to some undetected virus I got when I was little and had slowly deteriorated the kidney.”

Emily moved back to her hometown of Ellicott City, Maryland to undergo nine months of hemodialysis. During this time she took classes at University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC).

Fortunately, Emily’s father, Norman Biondi donated one of his kidneys to her. The successful transplant surgery took place on December 19, 2003, at the University of Maryland Medical during her winter break from school. She quickly recovered to start the semester in the spring.

Biondi still attends UMBC and is majoring in Health Administration and Public Policy. She took a year off to travel to be in a magic show. Now, she plans to finish her degree online and is also planning to create and sell modern art pieces, with half the proceeds going to her to send her to Australia for the World Transplant Games next year, and half to the Team Maryland budget.

Biondi praised the entire UMMC medical team that cared for her, including her transplant surgeon, Eugene Schweitzer, M.D., director of kidney transplantation at the Medical Center and professor of surgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

“The medical team helped in my recovery. The surgeon did a fabulous job. I was only in the hospital for a total of four days,” she says. “Also, my scar is incredible – nobody can see it. Every follow-up surgeon I saw said it was the best scar they had ever seen! I believe them because it’s really incredible.”

This page was last updated on: August 21, 2008.

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