Mom Who Refused Abortion Has Son Save Her Life
Source: Arizona Republic; May 31, 2001

Phoenix, AZ -- Nearly two decades ago, Robyn Bowen refused when a doctor
said she needed an abortion to save her life. Today, her 19-year-old son
will give her a kidney and a chance to keep living.

Bowen was three months pregnant when a doctor at the Mayo Clinic in
Rochester, Minn., warned that her unborn baby would drain important
nutrients and put a strain on her failing kidneys. After 12 hours of
induced labor, Bowen delivered a healthy baby, Brandon Clute, three weeks
early.

"We are going back to the same place that told us he would kill me and now
he is giving me life again," said Bowen, who grew up in Mesa, Arizona.

Bowen, 42, will be in a room today next to her son at the Mayo Clinic as
doctors make a small incision below Clute's navel and remove one of his
kidneys. The organ will then be placed inside his mother. It will be her
third kidney transplant; operations in 1985 and 1989 proved unsuccessful.

Clute is sacrificing an organ to free his mother from a dialysis machine
and give the two a chance to make up for the many times they were
separated by her illness.

For more than 15 years, Bowen has relied on the machine to withdraw blood
from her body and rinse it of toxins before pumping it back through her
veins. She and her only child hope today's five-hour operation frees her
from the three-hour, three-day-a-week regimen of being hooked up to a
machine.

But Bowen was reluctant to take a kidney from her son when he first
offered it at 14. Clute would have to wait until he turned 18 to be
considered, which was a relief to Bowen.

"I hoped he would forget," Bowen said. "You never want your child to go
through any kind of pain, especially for you." Clute didn't forget. At 5
he thought it was cool to watch when he accompanied his mother for her
dialysis treatment. In later years, he began to understand his mother's
pain. He missed her during her numerous hospitalizations. He hated
watching his mother hooked up to the machine when she received treatment
at home.

"I watched her get weaker and weaker and wasting away," Clute said. "I
knew someday I would have to save my mom's life."

Bowen tried her best to disguise her pain and be there for her son as much
as possible. She attended community college and worked processing medical
bills for a doctor while raising her son as a single mother.

But it was difficult to hide the scars left by needles that drew blood
from her arm. Those treatments once brought about a blood clot that numbed
her hand and robbed her ability to move her fingers, which she recovered
from after three years.

She was still receiving treatment in 1994 when she met her future husband,
Stephen, then a dialysis technician at an outpatient center in Scottsdale.
Stephen Bowen fell in love with his patient and two years later they
married. He would eventually treat his wife from their home while
continuing to treat patients at work.

The strain of working 10- to 14-hour days treating patients and then his
wife soon wore on Stephen Bowen. It was difficult to watch patients who
had become friends die and constantly be reminded of his wife's fragile
hold on life. In July, he left his job and joined the medical records
division at Scottsdale Health Care Osborn.

"We hadn't really spent much time together and when we did see each other,
she was hooked up to the machine," Stephen Bowen said. "The machine set
the tone for everything."

Robyn Bowen also has found strength in her faith and received financial
and emotional support from friends. Her church, East Valley Bible Church
in Gilbert, has donated thousands for her travel and medical costs and
continues to hold fund-raisers, including one last weekend that raised
$2,900.

Last year Bowen got to fulfill a promise when she recovered enough from a
serious illness to attend her son's graduation at Dobson High School.

Now Bowen hopes her son's kidney helps her make up for lost time.