PITTSBURGH (Newsradio 1020 KDKA) – On his way to the hospital to undergo a kidney transplant, retired police officer Tim Rush called in to speak with Marty Griffin and Wendy Bell to spread an important message: become an organ donor.
Rush has IGA Nephropathy, which is non-curable Kidney disease. Although he has had it his entire life and gets it checked yearly, in recent years, his kidney function has begun to decrease. That is why his doctors told him that now is the time to get a donor.
With his police community and the power of social media, Rush’s story for a donor spread from Pittsburgh to Minnesota.
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Little did Tim know that his kidney donor was living under his home.
Tim’s wife, Lisa, secretly had her blood type checked to see if she was a match, and when it was confirmed that she, too, was a A+, she quietly began to meet with doctors to see if she could be the donor for her husband.
The good news came for Tim around Christmas, in the form of a cufflinks.
“We went to a Christmas dinner and, like I said, I worked in homicide for years, so we were suits all the time and I always wore cufflinks. My wife slide a box across the table, and it was a box of cufflinks and they were two kidneys.”
Also in the box was a note from the surgeon saying that his wife was the perfect match.
Tuesday will be the day that both Lisa and Tim go into surgery, but before getting his new kidney, Tim wants to spread an important message:
“If you want to do something in life, and you felt like maybe someday you did something wrong in the past, and you’re a healthy person, get on that the kidney list. Get on that organ donor list. There are so many people dying, just waiting. For me, if I would gone on dialysis, I wouldn’t have lasted very long on dialysis with my disease. I would have passed away. And there are people every day that don’t have a wife like I do that says, “I’m going to do this.”
To get more information on organ donation, click here.
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