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WEST BLOOMFIELD — Direct Hearing in West Bloomfield provides individualized hearing solutions in a family friendly, pressure-free environment. As a business owner in the Bloomfield/Farmington area and surrounding communities since 2017, audiologist Nina Lopatin has quickly built a reputation as a trustworthy expert who provides concierge audiology and hearing aid services.
Direct Hearing is open Tuesday through Thursday and Friday mornings by appointment with Lopatin directly. She brings more than 40 years of experience in the audiology field focusing on adults and seniors to provide the best solutions to meet their hearing heath care needs.
Yet as focused on her business as Lopatin is, recently she has been equally attentive to the well-being of her nephew Dan Ehrmann, a pediatric cardiologist in the Ann Arbor area who is in need of a life-saving kidney transplant donor.
Ehrmann was born with Autosomal Dominant Polycystic Kidney Disease, which is a progressive condition that eventually causes kidney failure in most patients. Given the severity of Ehrmann’s disease, a kidney transplant offers a much better option to live a longer, healthier life. He is currently listed for a deceased kidney donor transplant at the University of Michigan, but the expected wait time of five to seven years is problematic. Ehrmann would require dialysis while waiting which is associated with numerous complications.
Simply put, Ehrmann is need of a living donor and Lopatin is helping him to find options.
“Dan is a wonderful human being who has helped save the lives of children through his work in medicine, and now, sadly, he is faced with his own challenge,” Lopatin said. She calls him a humble person who has much more to give to the communities where he lives and works.
Receiving a kidney from a living donor typically lasts longer and functions better than one from a deceased donor, according to the National Kidney Foundation (NKF). In fact, being a living donor is associated with a very low risk of short and long-term complications.
Additional facts about being a living kidney donor, according to the NKF, include:
• You only need one of your two kidneys to live a long, healthy life, with good kidney function.
• Most donor surgery is done laparoscopically, meaning through a tiny incision near your belly button.
• The recuperation period for most donors is typically two to four weeks.
• The cost of your evaluation and donor surgery will be covered by Ehrmann’s insurance.
• A donor will gain a separate team of healthcare professionals to evaluate you as a living donor. The evaluation is completely confidential.
Anyone interested in learning more about donation and potentially donating a kidney to Ehrmann or others must complete a screening questionnaire. This can be done by calling the Living Donor Office at the University of Michigan at 800-333-9013. Reference Daniel Eli Ehrmann, date of birth May 21, 1987.
To learn more about Lopatin’s business, Direct Hearing, visit directhearing.biz, call 248-657-4327 or email nina@directhearing.biz. She is accepting new patients.
