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A gigantic assist
Greg Ostertag and his sister are closer than you think: The Kings' backup center donated one of his kidneys to save her life
By Joe Davidson -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PST Thursday, November 25, 2004
Amy Hall wants to get one thing perfectly clear, right out of the gate.
Just because she received her brother's 13-centimeter gift in a transplant doesn't mean her blood rages to the same temperature. Or that over the past two years the kidney injected any more country, any more twang to the slang.
Hall's only sibling is Greg Ostertag, the Kings' backup center and a 7-foot-2, 280-pound mass of Wrangler jeans and belt buckles, huntin' stories and guffaws. Brother and sister look a little alike, sound a lot alike and share the same fervent passion from crude jokes to Dolly Parton to family.
But that's it. She'll tell you that she's 6 feet of designer skirts, nice fashion, mean curves and good taste.
"Look, we're really close, but remind the people in Sacramento that I'm much better looking, I don't have his big (butt), and I'm a lot smarter," Hall said by phone from her office in Dallas, where she works in the accounting department for a law firm. "And I love my Ford dual-cab truck just as much as Greg loves his, only mine isn't a diesel, and I don't have a gun rack or mudflaps."
Theirs has always an unbreakable bond, 'Tag and kid sister. He would hoist her high in the back yard of their Duncanville, Texas, home so she could peek at the puppies next door. They'd bicker and banter, fuss and fight, hug and howl.
The connection was made stronger and more lasting when Ostertag donated a kidney, since hers were failing from her struggle with diabetes.
Hall recovered fully, and Ostertag has shown no ill effects despite the rigors of NBA play. Hall counts every day as "a blessing" but understand this about this pair: No amount of surgery was going to sever their funny bone.
And when they talk on the phone today, it won't be a conversation with sappy Thanksgiving thoughts amid tears and reflection. Ostertag always begins conversations with his sister with, "How's Junior?" Junior, of course, is the kidney.
Before Junior, Hall didn't know if she'd have a future.
She was in dire straits in 2002 at age 29. She woke up one day blind in her right eye. She could barely muster the strength to get across the kitchen floor. She was, in effect, dying. She needed a kidney transplant, one of two bean-shaped organs the size of a fist that help rid the body of wastes. Ostertag was a perfect match, a rarity for some siblings, and he never hesitated to donate one of his two.
"Every day I'm thankful, so Thanksgiving isn't more prominent than any other day," Hall said. "Every day I get out of bed is an extra day I might not have had. Greg may say it's not a big deal because he's like that, but deep down, we both know it's a huge deal.
"It hasn't always been easy. I can't have kids. That's the path God has chosen for me. I've accepted it. But I'm very lucky and happy because I choose to be that way. Attitude is everything. I'm blessed to be here, and Greg is the reason."
Ostertag downplays his role. He's the only NBA player who gave a kidney in the middle of his career. Doctors have told him he needs no protective gear but must stay hydrated.
"She needed one, I had an extra, so I thought, What the heck?" Ostertag said. "She's a great gal, doing fine. The only way I'm really at risk is if I fall out of a tree huntin' or get hit by a truck."
Or if his sister lets him have it.
Hall said she will give her brother the business, reminding that she spent a good portion of her Tuesday night yelling at her TV, "Get your big butt in the paint, Greg!" That was Ostertag's best outing yet with the Kings - 14 minutes, five points, two rebounds against the Houston Rockets - since he signed with the team as a free agent last summer.
He'll roll with the critique.
About the only time these two get serious or somber is when they really talk about how dire things were for Hall.
She's more open to the topic than is her brother. Transplants and patient plights have become her life.
She regularly volunteers for speaking engagements on the importance of being a donor. She serves as a mentor for people who need a transplant and are on waiting lists in Dallas, offering encouragement and proof that things can get better, that a strong will and attitude are everything.
Ostertag isn't a kidney activist verbally, but he does have a T-shirt draped over his locker-room stall that tells of his loyalty. It reads, "An organ donor (me) saved my sister's life."
Hall recalled trying to muster the strength to make that call in February 2002. It's not every day someone asks her basketball brother for an organ that could end his career.
"I felt incredible guilt," Hall said. "You don't want to ever have to ask a sibling for something like this. What if one of his three kids needed one down the road, and he couldn't help them? Could I really do this to him?"
Hall knew it had to be some sort of good omen. Generally when she tries to call her brother at home, he doesn't answer because he's out on the land. This time, he answered. He calmed her.
"She was hysterical," Ostertag recalled.
Ostertag never gave a second thought to the prospect of walking away from some $16 million of salary from the Utah Jazz or someday facing the grim prospect of being unable to spare a kidney if one of his children needed a donor.
He told his Utah coaches and team management, "Look, my sister's in real trouble. I've got to help her."
When the 2001-02 season concluded, when all six tissue markers were a match, plans for the surgery in June were set in motion.
The basic rule of genetics among siblings, Hall recalled, is that "there was only a 25 percent chance that we'd match, but we did."
Ostertag knows why they matched: "We're twins, only I'm two years older."
And the nurses needed a mop to absorb all the tears at the news this might work.
"Amy cried like a baby, so did my mom, and so did my dad," Ostertag said. "I didn't. OK. I lied. I cried, too. I couldn't help it."
Hall was told she might feel better within two weeks of the transplant. The prospect of feeling better at all - let alone in two short weeks - seemed dim. But within 10 days, she had noticed a difference.
"I felt like a million bucks, completely different," Hall said.
She still requires four insulin shots a day just as she has since she was 7 - "like brushing teeth, you're so used to it," she said. She has to take 57 pills a day to ward off side effects, infection, rejection.
Hall competed in a transplant Olympics basketball tournament in Minneapolis over the summer. She muscled inside, scored and rebounded. She also pleaded the importance of being a donor at clinics.
"If I get one person to take a donor card with them, then I've done my deed," she said.
What pains her, however, is greeting the sad people struggling to get through each day at the Baylor Medical Center in Dallas, where she had her transplant and where she mentors others.
"I talk to a guy who has been waiting 15 years for a kidney," she said. "He's got a brother who is a match, but the brother won't do it because he's afraid. It breaks my heart."
Nationwide, 41 percent of living donor kidneys come from siblings, so Hall knows how important it can be for family members to be willing.
Said Ostertag: "There's no reason to be scared. I'm proof of that."
Ostertag's teammate, Peja Stojakovic, has a brother, Nenad, who has undergone two kidney transplants. The All-Star reports that his brother is doing fine, thanks to someone who was willing to donate.
"We feel lucky because none of us in the family were a match, and we all tried," Stojakovic said. "I admire Greg for what he's done. He gave his sister life."
The transplant also gave Ostertag a new image. For years, he was labeled everything from potential All-Star to underachiever to chief resident in coach Jerry Sloan's doghouse in Utah.
"I've been heckled my whole life," Ostertag said.
But after the transplant, things changed. No one challenged his heart anymore. Fans who jeered him in other NBA cities suddenly cooled it. They thrust a hand out or congratulated him verbally for being so heroic.
He was moved.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
continued on the next post.....
A gigantic assist
Greg Ostertag and his sister are closer than you think: The Kings' backup center donated one of his kidneys to save her life
By Joe Davidson -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PST Thursday, November 25, 2004
Amy Hall wants to get one thing perfectly clear, right out of the gate.
Just because she received her brother's 13-centimeter gift in a transplant doesn't mean her blood rages to the same temperature. Or that over the past two years the kidney injected any more country, any more twang to the slang.
Hall's only sibling is Greg Ostertag, the Kings' backup center and a 7-foot-2, 280-pound mass of Wrangler jeans and belt buckles, huntin' stories and guffaws. Brother and sister look a little alike, sound a lot alike and share the same fervent passion from crude jokes to Dolly Parton to family.
But that's it. She'll tell you that she's 6 feet of designer skirts, nice fashion, mean curves and good taste.
"Look, we're really close, but remind the people in Sacramento that I'm much better looking, I don't have his big (butt), and I'm a lot smarter," Hall said by phone from her office in Dallas, where she works in the accounting department for a law firm. "And I love my Ford dual-cab truck just as much as Greg loves his, only mine isn't a diesel, and I don't have a gun rack or mudflaps."
Theirs has always an unbreakable bond, 'Tag and kid sister. He would hoist her high in the back yard of their Duncanville, Texas, home so she could peek at the puppies next door. They'd bicker and banter, fuss and fight, hug and howl.
The connection was made stronger and more lasting when Ostertag donated a kidney, since hers were failing from her struggle with diabetes.
Hall recovered fully, and Ostertag has shown no ill effects despite the rigors of NBA play. Hall counts every day as "a blessing" but understand this about this pair: No amount of surgery was going to sever their funny bone.
And when they talk on the phone today, it won't be a conversation with sappy Thanksgiving thoughts amid tears and reflection. Ostertag always begins conversations with his sister with, "How's Junior?" Junior, of course, is the kidney.
Before Junior, Hall didn't know if she'd have a future.
She was in dire straits in 2002 at age 29. She woke up one day blind in her right eye. She could barely muster the strength to get across the kitchen floor. She was, in effect, dying. She needed a kidney transplant, one of two bean-shaped organs the size of a fist that help rid the body of wastes. Ostertag was a perfect match, a rarity for some siblings, and he never hesitated to donate one of his two.
"Every day I'm thankful, so Thanksgiving isn't more prominent than any other day," Hall said. "Every day I get out of bed is an extra day I might not have had. Greg may say it's not a big deal because he's like that, but deep down, we both know it's a huge deal.
"It hasn't always been easy. I can't have kids. That's the path God has chosen for me. I've accepted it. But I'm very lucky and happy because I choose to be that way. Attitude is everything. I'm blessed to be here, and Greg is the reason."
Ostertag downplays his role. He's the only NBA player who gave a kidney in the middle of his career. Doctors have told him he needs no protective gear but must stay hydrated.
"She needed one, I had an extra, so I thought, What the heck?" Ostertag said. "She's a great gal, doing fine. The only way I'm really at risk is if I fall out of a tree huntin' or get hit by a truck."
Or if his sister lets him have it.
Hall said she will give her brother the business, reminding that she spent a good portion of her Tuesday night yelling at her TV, "Get your big butt in the paint, Greg!" That was Ostertag's best outing yet with the Kings - 14 minutes, five points, two rebounds against the Houston Rockets - since he signed with the team as a free agent last summer.
He'll roll with the critique.
About the only time these two get serious or somber is when they really talk about how dire things were for Hall.
She's more open to the topic than is her brother. Transplants and patient plights have become her life.
She regularly volunteers for speaking engagements on the importance of being a donor. She serves as a mentor for people who need a transplant and are on waiting lists in Dallas, offering encouragement and proof that things can get better, that a strong will and attitude are everything.
Ostertag isn't a kidney activist verbally, but he does have a T-shirt draped over his locker-room stall that tells of his loyalty. It reads, "An organ donor (me) saved my sister's life."
Hall recalled trying to muster the strength to make that call in February 2002. It's not every day someone asks her basketball brother for an organ that could end his career.
"I felt incredible guilt," Hall said. "You don't want to ever have to ask a sibling for something like this. What if one of his three kids needed one down the road, and he couldn't help them? Could I really do this to him?"
Hall knew it had to be some sort of good omen. Generally when she tries to call her brother at home, he doesn't answer because he's out on the land. This time, he answered. He calmed her.
"She was hysterical," Ostertag recalled.
Ostertag never gave a second thought to the prospect of walking away from some $16 million of salary from the Utah Jazz or someday facing the grim prospect of being unable to spare a kidney if one of his children needed a donor.
He told his Utah coaches and team management, "Look, my sister's in real trouble. I've got to help her."
When the 2001-02 season concluded, when all six tissue markers were a match, plans for the surgery in June were set in motion.
The basic rule of genetics among siblings, Hall recalled, is that "there was only a 25 percent chance that we'd match, but we did."
Ostertag knows why they matched: "We're twins, only I'm two years older."
And the nurses needed a mop to absorb all the tears at the news this might work.
"Amy cried like a baby, so did my mom, and so did my dad," Ostertag said. "I didn't. OK. I lied. I cried, too. I couldn't help it."
Hall was told she might feel better within two weeks of the transplant. The prospect of feeling better at all - let alone in two short weeks - seemed dim. But within 10 days, she had noticed a difference.
"I felt like a million bucks, completely different," Hall said.
She still requires four insulin shots a day just as she has since she was 7 - "like brushing teeth, you're so used to it," she said. She has to take 57 pills a day to ward off side effects, infection, rejection.
Hall competed in a transplant Olympics basketball tournament in Minneapolis over the summer. She muscled inside, scored and rebounded. She also pleaded the importance of being a donor at clinics.
"If I get one person to take a donor card with them, then I've done my deed," she said.
What pains her, however, is greeting the sad people struggling to get through each day at the Baylor Medical Center in Dallas, where she had her transplant and where she mentors others.
"I talk to a guy who has been waiting 15 years for a kidney," she said. "He's got a brother who is a match, but the brother won't do it because he's afraid. It breaks my heart."
Nationwide, 41 percent of living donor kidneys come from siblings, so Hall knows how important it can be for family members to be willing.
Said Ostertag: "There's no reason to be scared. I'm proof of that."
Ostertag's teammate, Peja Stojakovic, has a brother, Nenad, who has undergone two kidney transplants. The All-Star reports that his brother is doing fine, thanks to someone who was willing to donate.
"We feel lucky because none of us in the family were a match, and we all tried," Stojakovic said. "I admire Greg for what he's done. He gave his sister life."
The transplant also gave Ostertag a new image. For years, he was labeled everything from potential All-Star to underachiever to chief resident in coach Jerry Sloan's doghouse in Utah.
"I've been heckled my whole life," Ostertag said.
But after the transplant, things changed. No one challenged his heart anymore. Fans who jeered him in other NBA cities suddenly cooled it. They thrust a hand out or congratulated him verbally for being so heroic.
He was moved.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
continued on the next post.....
