A life-and-death wait for an organ transplant ended happily for a Parsippany woman and longtime former employee of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ.

Eileen Goodman received a kidney donation at a hospital in Philadelphia on Oct. 9, giving the 60-year-old diabetes sufferer the chance for a "new beginning."

"I'm very excited," she told NJ Jewish News from her room at the Albert Einstein Medical Center. "I'm tired a little bit, but I'm very excited."

Goodman, a former administrative assistant in the UJC MetroWest marketing department, suffers not only from diabetes but high blood pressure.

After her kidneys began to fail in 2005, Goodman started taking painful treks to Morristown Memorial Hospital three times a week for lengthy sessions of dialysis. Although family members and a willing friend in the area were willing to donate a kidney, none was a suitable match.

Goodman signed onto a waiting list at Saint Barnabas Medical Center three years ago. In May 2006, Goodman left federation work after 14 years. She put herself on a second transplant list in Tampa, Fla., and continued to languish.

Then, just six weeks ago, a friend told her the waiting list in Pennsylvania was shorter than the others she was on, so she registered in Philadelphia.

The advice paid off, and on a Monday morning, the Goodmans received a phone call.

"They told us, ‘Pack your bags, but don't come down yet. We'll call you back,'" said her husband, Lou, as he sat by her bedside four days after surgery.

"They called just to say, ‘In case we want to reach you, we want to make sure you'll be around,'" she added. "Then, at 1:30, they called again to say, ‘It's still not definite.' They told Lou there were five people in front of us — some easy matches and some not so easy. I didn't want to get my hopes up too high, but by 3 p.m. they said, ‘Come on down'. It sounded like a ‘go,' but it wasn't a guaranteed ‘go' until I got here."

They arrived in Philadelphia three hours later, delayed by traffic jams. By 9 p.m. she was in the operating room while her husband waited nearby.

A friend in Philadelphia told the Goodmans that her surgeon, Dr. Radi Zaki, was an Orthodox Jew. At 2 a.m., as his wife and the transplant team emerged from the operation, Lou Goodman asked the doctor a personal question.

"I said, ‘Dr. Zaki, are you an M-O-T?' He said, ‘What's an M-O-T?' I said, ‘A member of the tribe.' He said, ‘I'm Egyptian.' So I gave him a big hug and told him in Arabic, ‘Thank you very much.'" Clearly, the friend in Philadelphia had been mistaken.

"Obviously, we're ecstatic," said their son, Jeremy, who is director of the Turtle Back Zoo in West Orange. "We're happy for Mom. We're very thankful to the donor. It's a new beginning, but there is still a long road ahead on the recovery path."

"There are a lot of major drugs they are giving me now, and it's going to take a little while, but they tell me everything looks good," said his mother. "The doctors seem to think everything is going in the direction that it should, but we'll have to wait it out and see. The only thing that is a real killer is the cost of the medicines. Medicare does cover some of them; the rest we'll have to manage."

As she has throughout much of her time in medical limbo, Goodman remains optimistic.

"I keep telling my grandson that one of these days I'll be able to run after him and catch him," she said.

Goodman does not know much about the person who gave her his kidney. "All I know is that he was a 49-year-old male who was relatively healthy," she said. If all goes well, the hospital staff will help her make contact with the family of the man who saved her life.

"Down the road I would like to contact his family and send them a thank-you note," she said. "They are giving me a chance in life; they are giving me a chance to watch my grandkids grow up and enjoy life with my family. It is really a wonderful thing that they did, that at a time of mourning they could think about helping other people. This is one of the biggest gifts you can do by making it possible for another person to live."