“It’s simple: act fairly, love kindly and walk humbly." ~ Micah 6:8
Janice first noticed something
wasn’t quite right with her son Jake when, at 5 years old, he began
experiencing extreme hunger and severe headaches. The course of their lives would change
forever when the boy was diagnosed with a rare form of diabetes.
‘Brittle’ diabetes is unusually aggressive. Unlike most diabetics, Jake was unable to
feel changes in his blood sugar, causing him to crash frequently. Janice checked his blood sugar every 2 hours,
even while he slept. Violent seizures
meant he couldn’t be left alone. For
more than a decade, he and his family dealt with increasingly dire prospects
surrounding his disease.
At 18, the doctor recommended that Jake consider a pancreas transplant, a relatively new procedure that, if successful, could cure Jake of the symptoms of his disease. After careful consideration, Jake was put on the national transplant list and life became a waiting game.
The call came two weeks before Christmas.
Less than 3 hours away, another
family was grieving. Their son Kalem had
suffered fatal injuries in an ATV crash.
An outgoing, charismatic young man who loved snow sports and fishing,
Kalem had dreamed of becoming a firefighter.
His parents, Bill and Tish, made the arduous decision to
donate his organs. Tish asked that at
least one of Kalem's organs go to a young person. The donor match was nearly perfect.
Jake’s surgery went well.
He returned home a week later, just in time for Christmas and his
mother’s birthday.
Months later, Janice put pen to paper and wrote to the
donor’s family anonymously through the transplant network. To her surprise, she received a letter back
from Tish, marking the first exchange in what would become a decades-long
friendship; a connection born of one mother's profound loss and another's
fervent hope for her son's life.
That bond continued to grow when the families gathered every
December for a Christmas tree lighting in honor of Kalem. The event would also raise money to buy hundreds
of bicycles for local children. But the
trips became too difficult for Bill, whose own diabetes left him in dire need
of a kidney transplant.
Janice wrote to Tish, asking to be Bill’s donor, never
questioning the viability of the transplant.
Intuitively, she knew she’d be a match (the probability of compatibility
is less than 50%). But, after weeks of
testing, Janice’s instincts proved correct.
Both surgeries proved successful. Janice gave back what Bill’s son had given
her own child a decade earlier. While both
families shun publicity for their actions, they hope their story will inspire
others to become donors.
They reunited recently for Jake’s wedding celebration held on
the one-year anniversary of Bill’s transplant.
Much of life is really about using your platform to spread
good will and serve others. Do good and
good will follow.
