Woman celebrates 40 years with a kidney donated by brother

Jerri Mast was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes at the age of six. She grew up, got married and lived with the disease until age 34, when it almost killed her. One day in 1982, at a mall with her husband, Chester, she suddenly became ill and wound up in the hospital.

Jerri spent three days in a diabetic coma, and three more weeks in the hospital. She suffered hemorrhaging in her eyes and emerged from the crisis blind. Her kidneys had shut down. She describes going through “stages of grief” over the resulting limitations on her busy life, which included raising three children.

“It’s like when someone dies,” she recalled. With no kidney function, she went on dialysis three days a week.

“That was terrible,” Jerri recalled. Dialysis is lifesaving but debilitating for patients. The solution was a kidney transplant, but several family members who were tested were not a good match. That left her younger brother in Oregon, Duane Roth.

“I’m not doing this,’” Duane recalled declaring at the time. “I was 25 with a wife and a two-year-old son, and I didn’t know how it would affect me. I love my sister dearly, but I was pushing back.”

Jerri saw things differently.

“I always thought it would be Duane,” she said.

“I felt the Lord nudging me,” Duane said. Duane worked in a cabinetry business in Oregon supplying hospitals, schools, and other large commercial customers. He was working on the shop floor one day, staple gun in hand, when the answer came.

“A peace came over me,” Duane recalled. “I yielded to what the Lord wanted me to do. I walked into the office and called Jerri, and told her I would do it. I never looked back, and I’ve never missed that kidney.”

Duane turned out to be a perfect match. Three years after Jerri almost died, the transplant took place at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital on July 17, 1985.

Duane Roth sits with his older sister, Jerri Mast, at her Chesapeake, Virginia, home on the 40th anniversary of his kidney donation. 

A unique donation

Jerri had her 40th annual office visit on July 18, 2025, where she heard her most recent blood test results and received an exam from nephrologist Dr. Harlan Rust, medical director for the Sentara renal transplant program.

“I’m not changing a thing,” Rust declared at the end of the visit. “You’ve taken good care of it, and matching pays off.”

Rust noted the long-term benefits of living kidney donation from a family member, and the rare zero-mismatch factors in Jerri and Duane’s blood, which allows for using less immunosuppression medication.

“For a person with diabetes, forty years (with a transplanted kidney) is an unusually long time,” Rust said.

Most kidney transplants last 10 to 20 years. There are multiple factors involved in how long they last, including living versus deceased donation, and how well recipients manage their health over the years.

“How well you care for it dictates duration,” said Dr. Amber Carrier, a Sentara transplant surgeon. “Sibling matches offer the highest probability, and parent-child.”

Carrier added that for Jerri Mast, with diabetes and other health issues, having the same donated kidney for 40 years is “unique”.

Duane and his wife, Sandy, flew in for the anniversary from Oregon, where Duane is pastor of a non-denominational Christian Church. He’s been an ordained minister for 32 years now, and he credits the kidney donation.

“It caused me to evaluate my life,” Duane said. “I knew I wanted to serve the Lord in some way. I decided on pastoral ministry, and donating a kidney to my sister was the springboard into that.”

Jerri still feels “gratitude and love” as a result of Duane’s gift, and, for the last 40 years, she’s had “no more dialysis.”