When Sheila Perry learned that she was a record-setter at 87 years old, she was surrounded by family, and all the group could do was laugh. Indeed, they had much to smile about.
The Wheaton local is the oldest known female in Illinois — and among the oldest in the United States — to have a successful kidney transplant.
“I knew it was probably unusual, but I had no idea that I was the oldest. My family was a lot more impressed than I was,” Perry said. “I was just grateful. I wasn’t spending any time thinking about the rest of it.”
Instead, the retired nonprofit executive is intent on returning to the vibrant life she has always led, filled with family, travel, music and art. She lives alone by choice and walks several miles a day.
“For now, I can continue with my life,” she said, “which was gradually going to get harder and harder to do.”
As life expectancies continue to increase in the United States and globally, Perry’s successful March 6 kidney transplant at Northwestern Medicine lends recent support for transplant surgeons to consider older candidates in good health. The oldest woman in the United States to get an organ transplant was 96 years old, setting the record in 2009.
Doctors say transplant surgery is still a relatively new and evolving medical field. While every transplant candidate has different health circumstances, a successful transplant encourages doctors to look beyond a patient’s age.
“We are learning the limits of our field in real time,” said Satish Nadig, a transplant surgeon at Northwestern Medicine. “When something like this happens, we think to ourselves, ‘Wow, we have come so far and still have so far to go.’”
In 2024, there were more than 22,000 kidney transplants performed among people on dialysis, according to the most recent annual report from the United States Renal Data System. Fewer than 800 of them were performed on people over the age of 75, the report said.
There is no age limit for a kidney transplant, but being considered for a donation is, by all accounts, a rigorous process.
Eligibility to receive a transplant organ is contingent on an extensive health evaluation, where doctors perform heart, lung and blood pressure tests, even interviews with a social worker. Age can be an inhibiting factor. Before being considered for a transplant surgery, Perry was rejected by another area hospital’s transplant program.
“The number of people who need organs far outpaces the number of organs that are available,” Nadig said. “A lot of institutions turn people down for good reason because we have to be stewards of these organs that someone else gave up either in passing or in life.”
Perry’s prescribed in-home peritoneal dialysis treatments began in July 2024, shrinking her once globe-trotting life to thrice weekly dialysis treatments, spending eight hours hooked up to a machine.
While she could manage the treatment at home, continuing her life was “gradually going to get harder and harder to do,” she said, as the kidney failure would require her to inevitably spend more and more time attached to the machine.
She joked that it limited the duration of her vacations to art shows in New York and New England. It even pared down Perry’s ability to attend nighttime concerts and museum lectures in downtown Chicago, just a train ride away.
“The way I tried to live my life was to keep as much of my life that I had enjoyed before as I could and just make the best of it,” Perry said.
A life-long supporter of education and the arts, the Boston native sat at the helm of nonprofits for a large part of her career. Perry spent a decade working as the director of corporate and foundation support at the North Bennet Street School and serving on the boards of the Cantata Singers and the Massachusetts Historical Society.
After retiring at 76, Perry moved to Houston, and later to Chicagoland to live near her family. She set her sights on traveling, and spending time with her nephew, who lives nearby in Aurora.
Still, despite her health challenges, Perry counts herself lucky. More than 90,000 people are on the waiting list for a kidney, and, according to the National Kidney Foundation, the average wait time for a kidney transplant in the United States is between three and five years.
Perry joined the high-priority organ waitlist for a kidney with the United Network of Organ Sharing, better known as UNOS, in July of last summer. She sat on the list for around seven months before undergoing the transplant, a much shorter duration than many.
“I was not expecting to be a candidate for a kidney transplant, but I was encouraged by my nephrologist and the kidney center to give it a go,” Perry said.
Transplant surgeons are already honing new techniques to make transplants more possible for older individuals. There are ways to reduce risks, like using spinal anesthesia instead of general anesthesia, which can have more adverse effects on patients over 65, according to the American Society of Anesthesiologists.
“I think it’s a very legitimate pathway for them,” said Vinayak Rohin, the Northwestern transplant surgeon who operated on Perry. “It has to be a biological age rather than just a chronological age. There are people, biologically, in much better shape. I think they should be afforded the opportunity to get a transplant.”
With her new kidney, Perry can get back to living her very full life. The Boston native now spends more time with her nephews, visiting museums and symphonies in Chicago, and traveling the world. Soon, Perry said she hopes to visit Europe again to explore the Scottish Islands or Sweden.
“Our hope is that people can advocate for themselves better and physicians will have the case behind their belt with some data that says, ‘This is a possibility,’” Nadig said. “We can save more lives that way.”
