Toms River Man Seeking Living Kidney Donor

TOMS RIVER, NJ — Eleven years ago, Gerard Ceraso went under the knife to get a new lease on life: a kidney transplant.

His wife, Michele, was the donor, and for several years all was well. Ceraso, 66, worked hard as a court officer, enjoyed riding his motorcycle and spending time with his sons. Over time, however, his health problems returned. Now he's in need of another kidney transplant, and he's hoping someone will step up to help him.

"I'm keeping my fingers crossed that some wonderful person will give me a little life," Ceraso said in a recent interview.

Ceraso's father, Gerard, died in 1964 of kidney failure at the age of 42. He traces his own problems with his kidneys to 2008, two years after surgery to remove his ruptured appendix. Surgery that he was told should have taken 20 minutes took 2-1/2 hours.

Ceraso said it was bloodwork leading up to him having a stent put in his heart that revealed the issues with his kidneys.

"One of the doctors noticed my creatine was going up," Ceraso said; he was sent to see a nephrologist, who told him to get on the list for a donor. That's when Michele stepped in and gave Gerard one of her kidneys on Jan. 19, 2010.

"I wish I had another one to give him," she said.

Ceraso originally is from Newark. He worked as a court officer, carrying out court orders such as tenant evictions, in the company his father started in the 1950s, eventually taking it over from his mother, who ran the business after her husband's death.

"During the riots in the 1960s, she was busy evicting tenants," Ceraso said. He raised his two sons from his first marriage while running the business. Years later, he met Michele; they were married in 2007. In 2016 they moved to Ocean County.

After the 2010 transplant, Gerard was doing well for about eight years, he said. He and Michele ran the business together — Michele running the office, Gerard and two employees on the road — until his health forced him to retire.

"We were so busy," Gerard said. "But it got to be overwhelming because I wasn't feeling well."

In 2018 he began having problems again. In 2019 he was told he had to go on dialysis; without it, he would die. He said he knew dialysis would be miserable, but it started out even worse as he nearly bled to death at the start when doctors put in the tubes that are used three times a week to filter his blood.

When he initially went on dialysis and back on the transplant list at St. Barnabas Medical Center, Michele put up flyers seeking a living donor to help him. She even put up ads on the back of a truck, trying to draw attention to Gerard's plight.

Then when the coronavirus pandemic hit, transplant surgeries stopped, Ceraso said.

In the meantime, volunteers with the St. Barnabas transplant program connected the Cerasos with Donna Tissot. Tissot, of Denville, is a passionate advocate with the NJ Sharing Network for those in need of kidney donations, a passion she developed after helping her brother-in-law find a kidney, she told News 12 Brooklyn.

Michele Ceraso said Tissot's help has been critical, as she is coping with fibromyalgia, which curtails her ability to do things.

St. Barnabas participates in the Paired Exchange program. Through that program, donors can specify who they are donating their kidney for, even if they do not have a matching blood type. Those donors and recipients are then matched with a donor and recipient whose blood types match, resulting in two transplants and two lives saved. Gerard Ceraso has blood type B+.

Information on what kidney donation entails and how it affects the donor is available on the St. Barnabas Medical Center website, and the Mayo Clinic offers additional information.

Dialysis is three days a week, four hours a day. Ceraso goes in at 5:30 a.m., and said the treatment takes a toll physically as well.

"There's so much I can't do," he said. "I can’t go up on the roof and fix it. I can't cut the grass, I can't shovel snow. I miss working, too."

"We're both independent," Michele said. While Ceraso's sons could come help them, "I don't want them coming down on the parkway," she said.

"I'm just keeping my fingers crossed," Ceraso said.

Those interested in helping Ceraso can fill out a referral form — indicate donor for Gerard Ceraso — to pursue the possibility of being a living donor.