In memory of Steve Rifkin

1957-2003

Recipient of four kidneys dies at 46
By Lona O'Connor, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer Wednesday, December 17, 2003

After almost a year of fighting infections and hoping for a life free of dialysis, Steve Rivkin died Sunday at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins Medical Center, where he received a kidney in January. Mr. Rivkin, who lived west of Boca Raton, was 46. At his side were his wife, Elaine Salloway, and Rebecca Benenson, the friend who donated her kidney to Mr. Rivkin. "I'd like Steve to be remembered as the strong and amazing person that he was," said Benenson, 28, who said repeatedly over the months that she never regretted her donation and felt it was one of the best things she had ever done. "I am grateful for knowing Steve and being able to perform the mitzvah (good deed) of prolonging his life," said Benenson, of Boca Raton. "I'd like to think that everyone who knew him was affected in a profound way."

Mr. Rivkin, who sold medical equipment, was something of a self-made medical miracle. He developed kidney disease as a child and had three unsuccessful kidney transplants as an adult. Because he was on dialysis since 1984 and had rejected three previous transplants, doctors discouraged him from trying again. Through Internet research, he located Dr. Robert Montgomery at Johns Hopkins. Montgomery had developed a method of stripping resistance chemicals from a patient's blood for several weeks before a transplant, thereby lowering the risk of rejection. Benenson, who knew Mr. Rivkin and Salloway through their synagogue, volunteered to donate one of her kidneys to Mr. Rivkin.

In January, Mr. Rivkin flew to Baltimore with high hopes for the operation, which took more than eight hours. But in the months after surgery, Rivkin was buffeted by one health crisis after another. He was returned to the Hopkins intensive care unit at least eight times with pneumonia and other infections, but kept fighting back. "He got a really resistant bug and that's what took him," Montgomery said. "He was such an amazing guy, a heroic person. He would get sick and then somehow get out of it. But this time there was nothing we could do."

Donations can be made to the
Steven Michael Rivkin Foundation
P.O. Box 1075
Duxbury, MA 02331