“My husband’s kidney failure happened pretty fast, because his general practitioner had told us his numbers were up and that down the road he would probably be looking at dialysis. But we were thinking in terms of years, and then it progressed really quickly. By the time he saw a nephrologist, his kidney function was pretty bad.
“He was on dialysis about five months. Even before he started dialysis, his nephrologist told him he needed to go ahead and start looking at getting on the transplant list, so I got evaluated. I was a match, but my husband is about 6-foot-3 and I’m 4-foot-11, so they wanted to find him one that was a better size match.
“The only thing we knew about the kidney chain was that we have a friend who had donated altruistically. I thought that was amazing. I was giving because I wanted to get my husband one; but to hear this man had done it to help a stranger, to me that makes someone a real angel.
“I was determined either to give my husband a kidney or get him one. We worried at first about his getting a kidney from someone we didn’t know, because you don’t necessarily know what someone else’s medical history is going to be. But once we knew he needed a larger kidney that would function better for him, we thought that was the right thing to do. And I was happy that, by going through the kidney chain, it was helping another person, too — the person who would get my kidney.
“After the transplants, they got us all in a room together, and I met the person who got my kidney. It was really emotional. Everybody started crying and saying, ‘Thank you, thank you!’
“If someone else were thinking of donating, I would definitely tell them they should get evaluated. Do your research and find a support group, like the Living Kidney Donors Network on Facebook, because it’s good to have a lot of support from people who’ve been through it.
“Today I feel great. I was amazed. I feel really lucky because all I have are these teeny tiny little scars you can barely see any more. Dr. Jayme Locke did an amazing job.”