What condition affects the team’s general manager?

The 2023-2024 NBA season was already complicated for the Utah Jazz, but recent news clouded the team’s outlook even more. General manager Justin Zanik announced that he will undergo kidney transplant surgery, scheduled for today, Tuesday, April 2.

In a statement on the team’s website, Zanik announced that he was diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease (PKD) in early March. The manager was able to find a donor thanks to the Living Donor Program of the National Kidney Registry.

Zanik comes from a family with a genetic predisposition to kidney diseases. His father, Phil Zanik, received a kidney transplant 21 years ago for the same disease, and Justin only found out about his condition thanks to the insistence of his wife, Gina, that he have a medical check-up.

During the 2023 offseason, Gina insisted that she saw her husband more tired than usual. However, Zanik attributed this to the heavy workload he had faced in recent months; despite this, he accepted his wife’s request to see the doctor.

The timely diagnosis

The check-up showed good results for Zanik in all areas except one: his kidney function was 14%. Any result below 15% is diagnosed as kidney failure.

The result hit Zanik deeply. “Your first thoughts are like, ‘What’s going to happen to me? What’s dialysis like? When’s that going to happen? Transplant?’ All those things run through your mind,” explained the manager in an interview for the Jazz website.

He and Gina immediately consulted with a nephrologist, who guided them step by step through the diagnosis and donor search process. Zanik admitted that for most people, being an organ donor is something very far away, which is why the waiting time for a kidney is three to five years.

“But what’s really cool about medical technology now and science, which has been going on for a while, is a living donor transplant. Where someone that is a match for you based on blood type and a lot of other factors [can work],” Zanik explained.

The forecast for Zanik

The Living Donor Program allowed a person close to Zanik to donate a kidney despite not being a match for the patient. In exchange, Zanik was able to access a compatible donor almost as if it were a family member.

Now, the Jazz GM will enter the operating room, will be hospitalized for three to four days, and, according to his own statements, could return to work in just over three weeks.

In this regard, the team expressed all its support for Zanik through a statement. “The Utah Jazz send our love and support to general manager Justin Zanik, his wife Gina, and their family as Justin prepares for a kidney transplant to address polycystic kidney disease,” says a post on the team’s X account.

For their part, the Zanik family said, “We would like to extend our deepest gratitude to University of Utah Health and their incredible medical staff. The care, expertise, and guidance they have provided our family and many others, has been invaluable.”