James Mangus - 5
"I just had the capability to step up and do something that would positively impact at least one person’s life. It was just a no-brainer."
"Thomas, gosh, that man is like the Energizer Bunny. He has had so much going on with his health through the years, but he just keeps going. We’d been with him throughout both lung transplants and watched his health go in and out from there. There was just a boatload of medication he had to take, and it wasn’t really a surprise when we found out his kidneys were failing.
"I was in Afghanistan as part of the Texas Army National Guard when we found out he had to go on dialysis. That was around the fall 2011 when this thing really started to go around the family. Everyone was reaching out to see who could be tested and who might be a match.
"I got home from Afghanistan right at the first part of 2012. Shortly thereafter, I talked to someone at UAB and had a kit sent out and got my blood tested. They told me then that I wasn’t a match. It was kind of a let down. Then it looked like he had an actual direct match with someone else, but that never materialized.
"So Thomas kept on going and kept doing dialysis. We live in the Dallas area, so we don’t get to see Thomas that much — maybe two to three times a year. Getting to see Thomas when we did and how he struggled with dialysis was just a beating. And I’m sure it’s no better for anybody else.
"The paired program took hold at UAB last year and Kelli, Thomas’ wife, said, ‘If you’re still up for it, would you be interested in doing the paired program? So I called the number and got another blood kit and went through the testing in February or March of 2013, and by the time it all came back around, it was late fall. It was around then that they told Thomas we were getting close. They were waiting for some pieces to fall in the chain. And then, one day, it just happened. I got about two weeks' notice.
"As for why I did it, why I gave? I don’t know. I guess growing up and spending a good part of my adult life in the military, you kind of get the mindset that you’re really there to serve. You would do whatever it took to help somebody out.
"Thomas is just a one in a million guy. He’s just a good dude, a great family man — just a solid guy. You look at a guy like that, and you know, a lot of us question higher powers and whatever the case is, but you look at a guy like Thomas and you just wonder how a guy who is such a good solid dude as this could come down with all of this stuff. You just want to do whatever you can to help. I just had the capability to step up and do something that would positively impact at least one person’s life. It was just a no-brainer.
"Martha Kelley, who received my kidney, she’s such a sweet lady. Her overall level of health prior to the transplant was really bad. I felt bad that I couldn’t spend much time with her after the transplant. But she and her family were just great people. It was wonderful to get an opportunity to meet them.
"Transplantation as a whole has just gone crazy over the past several decades. I remember someone in my late teens and early 20s that had a kidney transplant. The stuff they had to go through back then was just horrific — huge gaps and scars down the whole side of their body. It wasn’t an easy, recoverable thing. These days, oh my gosh. Just the transplant process itself has gotten so much better. The survivability is so much better than it used to be.
"Coming up with a program like this paired program is just ingenious. Now you’ve spread the opportunity out so much that people that may not have been capable of receiving an organ in years past, now, it doesn’t have to be a direct match. You can enter the program and hopefully they can connect all of the dots and when it all flushes out a bunch of people like this get to be involved and hopefully get life going again."