Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest.
Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.
—O. Henry, “The Gift of the Magi”
Knowing his father’s first transplanted kidney would eventually need to be replaced, Bob, a real estate developer from Utah, always expected he might be called upon to donate one of his. But he and the 70 other friends and relatives who applied to be tested as potential kidney donors were not a match for his father, Buzz, whose kidney function was deteriorating rapidly.
After requesting their records be transferred from another transplant facility, Buzz and Bob met with kidney surgeon, Dr. Adam Bingaman, at Texas Transplant Institute** in San Antonio, Texas, where they had been referred by Buzz’snephrologist. As Director of the Living Donor Kidney Transplant Program, the largest in the United States, Dr. Bingaman was very optimistic that their extensive database of incompatible donor and recipient pairs would soon provide a match for the father and son.
These words came to Suzette in prayer at an evening church service when the service was abruptly halted to announce that the sister of a fellow congregant was in hospital and critically ill. Wanting to help but worried about intruding in the family’s business, Suzette prayed for the young woman who, she would later learn, needed a kidney transplant.
“Find a kidney for Kashla.”
Suzette continued to seek spiritual guidance. Then, with the family’s blessing, Suzette and Kashla’s family organized an educational seminar at their church for people to meet Kashla and learn more about kidney transplantation. Before the meeting, Suzette was tested to see if she might be a match—if only to show others how simple the process was. Suzette was devastated by the poor turnout at the seminar. “I just wept when I got home. Kashla was walking dead—she was so sick. And I asked, ‘Lord, do they not see how sick she is?’”
Kashla was just 29 years old when she faced kidney failure for the second time. Her transplanted kidney had lasted 17 years, but now—on dialysis, tired, unable to work full time, dealing with infections, hospitalizations and blood transfusions, Kashla learns about the Live Donor Kidney Transplant Program at Texas Transplant Institute** from the staff at the dialysis clinic.
Her parents, Leonard and Judy, and older brother, Torrance, were willing but unsuitable donors because of their high blood pressure. Torrance had a friend at their church, Suzette, who volunteered to donate her kidney but she wasn’t a match.
Imagine you desperately need a kidney transplant. You spend four hours a day, three days a week for five months on dialysis. And you’ve got multiple family members and friends who want to donate a kidney, but no one is a match.
That’s exactly what happened to 62-year-old Buzz, a successful entrepreneur from Utah on assignment in San Antonio for three years, who received his first kidney transplant at age 29. That kidney started to fail in May 2009 after 32 years. (Most kidneys from living donors last 15-20 years).
Despite a strong family history of kidney disease, Larry, 64 a retired United States Air Force Major General, was totally unprepared to learn his kidneys were suddenly failing. He figured at his age it had passed him by. His nephrologist, Dr. Lynda Szeczech, Associate Professor of Medicine at Duke University Medical Center and President of the National Kidney Foundation, had been following Larry closely and suggested he consider a transplant from a living donor. Larry initially preferred being added to the waiting list for a kidney from a deceased donor—as his brother had done 17 years earlier. “I would have done a cadaver transplant. I didn’t want to put anyone at risk,” Larry says.
His devoted wife, Anne, a registered nurse and medical/technical writer, had another idea: she wanted to donate her kidney. “She told me that we’re in it together and anything that happens to me happens to her,” Larry says. Although her kidney wouldn’t be a match for her husband’s, Anne was undaunted.
When Giovanni was born, he was two months premature, had cysts on his brain and his lungs were not fully developed. Three days later his parents learned his kidneys were failing.
“Although kidney failure didn’t sound great, we didn’t think that was the worst thing he could have relative to his other problems,” Giovanni’s mother, Michelle, says.
But by the time he was just 14 months old, Giovanni needed a kidney transplant. No one could have predicted then that after years of unlikely events and near tragedies, he would receive a second kidney from an unknown living donor in San Antonio, thanks to the Texas Transplant Institute**’s Incompatible Live Kidney Donor Exchange Program—the largest living donor kidney transplant program in the United States.
Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest.
Despite a strong family history of kidney disease, Larry, 64 a retired United States Air Force Major General, was totally unprepared to learn his kidneys were suddenly failing. He figured at his age it had passed him by. His nephrologist, Dr. Lynda Szeczech, Associate Professor of Medicine at Duke University Medical Center and President of the National Kidney Foundation, had been following Larry closely and suggested he consider a transplant from a living donor. Larry initially preferred being added to the waiting list for a kidney from a deceased donor—as his brother had done 17 years earlier. “I would have done a cadaver transplant. I didn’t want to put anyone at risk,” Larry says. 
