US doc demands $1.5m for donated organ

A US doctor is demanding his ex-missus stump $1.5m after she ran off with their three kids and one of his kidneys, the New York Daily News reports.

Richard Batista, 49, donated the organ to his wife Dawnell eight years ago in an attempt to salvage their foundering marriage. She'd already suffered two failed transplants when hubby offered a renal lifeline, discovering his kidney was a match at odds of 700,000-to-1.

The Nassau University Medical Center surgeon said: "My first priority was to save her life. The second bonus was to turn our marriage around."

Sadly, while the first wish came true, the second wasn't to be. While a revitalised Dawnell Batista quickly "returned to school to earn a master's degree in nursing, and took up karate", the marriage survived just another four years. Richard Batista recounted that "after an injury suffered while trying to earn her black belt" (in karate, not nursing), his wife "began physical therapy - which evolved into an affair with her therapist".

He said: "It put a hole in my heart that still exists. To this day, I'm a man of pride. To be betrayed that way, humiliated - I can't even begin to say."

Dr Batista claims his former partner "slapped me with divorce papers when I was in surgery trying to save another person's life", and that he hasn't seen his three daughters in months.

Accordingly, the cuckolded, demirenal and evidently rather pissed off chap has decided to charge the mother of his children the aforementioned 1.5m bucks for the use of his kidney.

The case is apparently - and unsurprisingly, let's face it - "the first of its kind in New York State". Julia Rivera of the New York Organ Donor Network summed the whole thing up nicely with: "This is extraordinary." ®

Bootnote

If you want to read more about the sorry tale of the Batistas, and in particular hubby's near-God experience at his post-transplant missus's bedside, do so at your peril here.