![]() ![]() About two years ago, she had a golf ball-sized kidney stone removed. I wasn’t really in any pain, but I was exhausted a lot.”ĭebbie has dealt with Crohn’s Disease, a chronic inflammation of the bowels, for some time. “I didn’t realize what was happening at the time. They’d retired from the family business, Village Shoes, and were planning to enjoy their golden years. “Like I always say, having even one more day with her is worth it.”ĭEBBIE AND BOB Kuntz of Great Falls celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary last fall. But it didn’t take long for her to agree with the exchange. Lara would give her kidney to a total stranger, in return for her mother receiving one from a similarly unknown person. Until she learned her mother, Debbie Kuntz, was in dire need of a transplant.īut this would not be a conventional gift. The thought of donating one of her kidneys? It never entered Lara’s mind. Four or five miles a day, six days a week. She sells real estate, manages dozens of apartments and owns a business with her husband, Todd. “You can be somebody else’s hope, it could be you to show someone a glimpse of what humanity really means.Lara Clark is a healthy, energetic mother of three in Great Falls. ![]() I’m hopeful for humanity and I hope other people will take that away from this story,” Tia said. Tia and Susan hope that by sharing their story, others will be inspired to become donors – or at least be a little kinder to one another. They were welcomed back by a crowd of cheering colleagues, most of them in tears, according to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, which shared a video of the moment on Facebook. We are looking forward to spending time together and making new healthy memories,” he said.Īfter a few months of healing, the two women returned to work on May 17. “The Wimbushes are our family and are the best people we have ever met. “We all took a leap of faith in doing this and now we are forever connected, always rooting each other on in both the recovery process and in this second chance of life.” Since the kidney exchange, the couples have grown closer. “I have been a transplant nephrologist since 2008 working in active living donation and paired kidney exchange programs, and I have personally never seen this happen before.”Ī 95-year-old man just became the oldest organ donor in US history ![]() “It is very rare for two immunologically incompatible pairs to propose their own paired exchange and actually be a match for one another,” Christina Klein, a transplant nephrologist at Piedmont Atlanta Hospital, said in a statement. All four surgeries went smoothly – and Lance’s and Rodney’s bodies accepted their new kidneys. Tia gave Lance her kidney, and Susan gave Rodney hers. On March 19, 2021, the four friends underwent surgery at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta. Tia also ended up being a match for her husband, but she and Rodney made the decision to continue with the paired exchange to help save Lance, who struggled to find a donor due to his rare blood type. Shortly after discovering they could be matches, Tia and Susan underwent blood type and antibody tests that confirmed it. ![]() “We just never knew what could happen in just a single moment.” “There was always the fear of the unknown, the fear of the worst-case scenario that’s looming,” Tia said. Unfortunately, not all patients live that long.Īs their husbands struggled, Tia and Susan raced the clock, attempting to find kidney donors before the disease took their husbands’ lives. Courtesy Children's Healthcare of Atlantaīy 2020, both men were put on the transplant list, which has an average wait time of at least five years, according to the American Kidney Fund. He started undergoing regular dialysis to help him survive. That day, he was diagnosed with kidney failure and chronic kidney disease. “Within an hour of running tests, they started saying things like, ‘Has anyone ever mentioned kidney failure to you?’ And we were like what’s happening? What are you talking about? What does this mean for us?” She found his blood pressure was dangerously high and immediately sent him to the emergency room. In August 2019, the school teacher and coach went to the nurse’s office because he wasn’t feeling well. Kidney disease had upended both women’s lives.įor Rodney Wimbush, Tia’s husband, what was supposed to be a typical school day became the day he discovered his kidneys were failing him. Wimbush returned to her desk and called her donor coordinator to begin the process of confirming that the pair were a match for their spouses. “All that was going through my head is, ‘What if we can donate our kidneys to each other’s husbands?’ I could have never imagined it,” Wimbush told CNN. Organ transplant patients may benefit from third Covid-19 vaccine dose to boost antibodies, study suggests ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |