Rejected

Getting an organ transplant is very difficult indeed—as more than one MMJ patient has discovered

Playa del Rey resident Toni Trujillo is exactly the kind of patient California voters had in mind when they passed the nation’s first medical marijuana law in 1996.

A 40-year-old dialysis patient in desperate need of a new kidney, Trujillo was advised by her doctor to try cannabis for pain relief, to combat nausea and, most importantly, to improve her appetite—her condition requires her to keep her protein levels high. So, in 2010, Trujillo registered with the state as a medical marijuana patient and began using cannabis, which she found provided the added benefit of helping her relax. High stress levels are the norm for people in need of organ transplants, and Trujillo, whose kidneys were severely damaged by a streptococcus infection when she was a child, has been living with fear and high stress most of her life.

But what neither Trujillo, nor her doctor, nor even the voters who approved Proposition 215 anticipated was that her hospital, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, would cite the very drug helping make her life livable as the reason for handing her a potential death sentence. In April, Trujillo was informed Cedars-Sinai had removed her name from an organ transplant list because she had tested positive for marijuana.

“They never sent me a formal letter,” Trujillo says. “Someone at the dialysis center told me I’d been put on hold for a transplant—they had been taking my blood and sending it to Cedars. I called Cedars and they told me over the phone I had been removed from the list for substance abuse.”

The news stunned Trujillo. She was used to getting bad medical news, but this news was different: getting denied a transplant for taking doctor-recommended medicine simply didn’t make sense.

“It just feels unfair that they’d put me on hold for something like that,” she says. “It’s really confusing—I just don’t know what to think.”

CULTURE readers may recall that Cedars Sinai has done this before. Norman B. Smith is a liver cancer patient who had been advised to use medical marijuana by his Cedar-Sinai doctor and who, in 2011, was removed from a liver transplant list by Cedars-Sinai for marijuana use. Cedars-Sinai did not return our repeated calls for this story.

Trujillo says a Cedars-Sinai official told her transplant patients who inhale marijuana risk picking up a fungus that can cause infections in people with suppressed immune systems—like transplants patients. Indeed, the fungus species aspergillus can show up in improperly cured cannabis and can cause deadly infections in immune-suppressed transplant patients. But according to the medical evidence at hand, exactly one person is known to have directly contracted aspergillosis from smoking moldy marijuana. Moreover, Cedars-Sinai makes no distinction between THC-positive blood tests from smoking marijuana and eating marijuana-laced edibles, which carries no risk of aspergillus infection.

After learning of Trujillo’s predicament, ASA Chief Counsel Joe Elford penned a letter to Andrew Klein, director of the Cedars-Sinai transplant center, urging him to “reconsider this extremely important decision and reinstate Ms. Trujillo for a kidney transplant with Cedars-Sinai.” Shortly after, Trujillo says she received a call from an official at the hospital, informing her that she had been placed back on the list. The official told her the decision was made because she had re-tested negative for THC.

Trujillo chose to move forward, but recently added that it had been more than a month since she was verbally informed—nothing in writing, just a phone call—of being placed back on the organ transplant list, and she’s received no other word from Cedars-Sinai.

“That was the last I heard from anyone,” she says. “As far as I know I’m on the list, but that doesn’t really mean anything.”