DRs Said It'd Take Him 15 Yrs To Get Kidney, But Her New Years Resolution Was To Donate To Stranger
No one who has examined organ-donation statistics in the United States would argue that we don’t face a public-health crisis. The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network states that, as of Friday morning, 114,744 people need a lifesaving organ transplant.
However, only 7,104 individuals have provided donations as of May 2018. So where does that leave the ill? They are waiting at death’s door for a miracle.
David Nicherie, a 29-year-old man from Oakland, California, was just one such person. Chronic inflammatory bowel disease and an autoimmune disorder had wrecked havoc on his body.
The end result of those twin afflictions was that Nicherie’s kidneys had failed. Family and friends had tried to offer their own organs, but doctors said none of them would work and that his only hope was to get on an organ list — a list they said would take 15 years for him to get a new kidney.
That left Nicherie on dialysis for five long years, a type of treatment notorious for the grueling physical and psychological toll it extracts from patients. And Nicherie was no exception.
“I was not in a good frame of mind,” he explained to KTVU. “Dialysis was tough and was getting tougher.”
Nicherie started seriously looking into hospice care, ready for his own life to end. But before taking that final step, he tried something unorthodox: He put an ad on Craigslist asking for a kidney.
He got plenty of responses, but most wanted money or (in the case of foreign donors) help immigrating to America. Then he heard from Jessica Morris, a Southern California resident who was also 29 years old.
Unbeknown to Nicherie, Morris had also done something unorthodox. The surgical nurse had made a 2018 New Year’s resolution to donate a kidney for free.
“I wanted someone who was going to be able to tell me their life struggles, what they went through and how it was going to change them,” she said. “Also, I wanted it to go to someone who needed it the most.”
When she saw Nicherie’s ad, “I knew there was someone in desperate need of a kidney if they are posting on the internet.” For his part, he thought that Morris’ response “was a scam.”
But it wasn’t, and as the two conversed, all of the pieces started falling into place. And on June 12, the transplant took place.
“I just got lucky that she was that amazing and that she was willing to give me such a gift,’’ Nicherie said. “I’m just ready to end one journey and start another one.”
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