“You’re a perfect match.”
Kendra Swift kept hearing those words over and over in her mind. Ever since a close friend had revealed that her stepfather needed a kidney transplant, the same message kept popping up in her subconscious.
Swift tried to ignore it, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was pushing her to help if she could. The southside Indianapolis resident was supposed to be an organ donor.
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Click here to purchase photos from this gallery“I’ll never forget it. I was listening to music, getting ready for work, and this voice in my head kept saying I was a perfect match,” she said. “The words were very confident and sure, that this was what I had to do.”
Though the odds of a non-relative being a match for a potential transplant are low, Swift was tested to be the donor who would save Mike Lee’s life. She was a match.
In March, Swift and Lee underwent surgery to perform the kidney transplant. Lee has recovered kidney function that he thought he’d never have again, and feels better than he has in years. Swift has healed from the surgery as well, and both are using their experience to advocate for the importance of organ donation.
“It’s the kindest thing that’s ever been done to me or for me. I told her she’s like a daughter to me now,” Lee said.
Surprising news, intense process
Family members and friends gathered around the television, taking a break from the birthday party to watch a video presented with little explanation.
Lee and his wife, Margo, weren’t sure what they were watching — maybe the announcement that someone was having a baby?
Instead, it was a series of clips that Swift had taken at each of her doctor’s appointments, documenting her journey to be an organ donor. She had gone through the testing process to be a kidney donor in secret, without telling the Lees. She didn’t want to disappoint them if she wasn’t a match.
But at the end of the video, Mike Lee learned that he’d have his kidney transplant.
“We were sobbing,” he said. “I was holding this poor girl pretty tightly and sobbing into her shoulder.”
Swift is close friends with Mike Lee’s stepdaughter, Jamie. The two work together at Latitudes Apartments on the southside of Indianapolis. The two families have been together at picnics and family events, and attended a football game together in the past.
So when Swift learned of Mike Lee’s deteriorating health, she was heartbroken for her friend and her family.
Mike Lee, a Brownsburg resident, was diagnosed with kidney disease since 2015. For years, he had suffered from fatigue and memory loss, which he chalked up to a hectic job as a construction project manager for Speedway.
“He had not been right for a long time,” Margo Lee said. “He just said he was working too many hours or traveling all the time. Finally, I convinced to go to the doctor.”
A routine checkup revealed that Mike Lee’s kidneys were not working like they were supposed to removing waste from the body, so his physician referred him to a nephrologist.
More thorough testing showed that he had nephropathy, a type of kidney disease. He discussed started dialysis, and he was referred to the organ transplant center at St. Vincent.
After an extensive evaluation, including heart monitoring and lung scans to determine if he was even healthy enough to be an organ recipient, he was placed on the kidney transplant list in November 2015.
“The recipient has to go through a very thorough evaluation, which includes making sure they are strong enough to go through the surgery,” said Dr. Islam Ghoneim, kidney and pancreas transplant program surgical director for St. Vincent. “It also involves making sure the blood vessels in the pelvis are OK, so we can connect the new kidney.”
He also was screened for cancers and other diseases, due to how his immune system would be reduced due to the surgery.
Almost as quickly as he was placed on the transplant list, the Lee family thought their prayers had been answered. Mike Lee was at an appointment to get a catheter put in to start dialysis when he received a phone call that a potential match had been found.
“It was unusual that I was called that quickly. They told me I was the first alternate. They had another patient who was higher on the list than me, but I was next in line if for some reason that person wasn’t healthy enough for the transplant,” he said.
But the other patient was healthy, and the transplant was completed. That was the Lee family’s introduction to the maddening and random wait incipient in the transplant process.
Listening to the voice
Seven people volunteered to be tested to be a living kidney donor for Mike Lee, including his wife, Margo Lee. None were accepted as potential donors.
“We went through six or seven times where we had the high of a potential donor, down to the low where the donor wasn’t accepted,” Mike Lee said.
While waiting, Mike Lee’s condition deteriorated. He started dialysis to clear urine and other toxins from his body. For nine hours every night, a machine in his home performed the job his kidneys normally would have.
“It did help me feel better, but did not take me to the level I am now,” he said.
Swift offered her support to the family however she could. As she heard the family’s struggle to find a kidney donor, and all of the failed attempts for family members to be a living donor, she heard the voice telling her to act.
At first, she didn’t. But those words kept echoing in her head. In late 2017, after another potential donor fell through for Mike Lee, she decided to have herself tested to be a donor.
She was tested to see if her blood type and antigen levels matched Mike Lee’s, and every aspect lined up, exactly.
“The nurse called me and asked if we were sure we weren’t related, because it was that much of a match,” Swift said. “They said it was a needle-in-a-haystack match.”
Swift went through a battery of tests ensuring that her body was healthy enough to survive with one kidney.
“We have a motto: The donor always comes first,” Ghoneim said. “Even though it’s a very selfless thought that brings the donor to our center so they can help someone else, on that day when they’re evaluated, it’s not who the kidney is going to, but if they are healthy enough to donate safely, and if they’ll be healthy for the foreseeable future.”
She also started the Whole 30 diet, which encourages eating only non-processed vegetables, meat, eggs, some fruit and natural fats. She ended up losing between 30 and 40 pounds, setting her up to be in flawless health for the surgery.
“I wanted to give him the best kidney I could. For one, I felt that I was called to do this, so I wanted to be sure I was doing the best job I could. And I wanted to give Mike a kidney that was going to work for him for a long period of time,” she said.
After Swift revealed that she was going to be the donor, she and the Lees all worked together to plan a time for the transplant. The surgery was slated for March 7 at St. Vincent Indianapolis.
With both patients examined and ready, they gathered to pray. Swift held Mike Lee’s hand while they bowed their heads, and hugged him before each were taken to their respective surgical rooms.
A new life
Ghoneim led the surgical team working on both patients, starting with Swift, removing the kidney, before moving to Mike Lee to implant the new organ. The kidney started working immediately, while Mike Lee was still on the operating table.
Recovery has been ongoing for both Mike Lee and Swift. For the first few weeks, he was very weak, where he could barely get up from a chair on his own. But slowly he became stronger, to the point where he could move around the house, then take trips to Walmart just so he could walk and be active.
Only in early May was he able to go back to work for the first time.
Swift was in the hospital for two days recovering, and spent the next few weeks recovering at home. Besides the soreness from major surgery in her abdomen, she would feel her internal organs adjusting to the empty space where her kidney had been.
“I don’t think you get used to the feeling of your organs shifting when you turn over,” she said. “It would gurgle, and you could feel it brush against the stomach. It was very strange.”
Their shared experience has motivated Swift and Mike Lee to become outspoken advocates for organ donation.
On April 21, they traveled to Chicago, where a group of living organ donors and their recipients were meeting in Millennium Park to break the Guinness world-record for largest gathering of living donors.
With 451 organ donors, each with documentation from their surgeons certifying that they’d given their kidneys or liver, they set the record.
Swift started a website, detailing her journey and letting people know about the importance of organ donation. She joined the United Network for Organ Sharing, the nonprofit group that manages organ donation in the U.S.
One of the main themes on the website is a Bible verse, Esther 4:14.
The verse reads, “Perhaps this is the moment for which you were created.”
With what she calls Project 4:14, Swift hopes to inspire 414 people to register as organ donors by the end of the year.
“Doing some research on why people aren’t donors, I found the biggest reason was people just didn’t think about it,” she said. “What I try to explain to people, in that time frame when you’re thinking about doing it, you can be saving someone’s life if yours was lost for some reason.”
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Get involved
Through her experience of being a kidney donor, Kendra Swift has become an outspoken advocate for organ donation.
She has started an effort, Project 4:14, to register 414 people to be organ donors by the end of the year.
To learn more, go to ksjourney4apurpose.com.
Other organ donation resources:
To register to be an organ donor through Donate Life America: donatelife.net/register
To sign up to be a living kidney donor with St. Vincent Renal Transplant Center: stvincent.donorscreen.org/register/donate-kidney
To learn more about organ donation through the United Network for Organ Sharing: unos.org
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2: People who could potentially see again for every eye donor.
8: Lives that can be potentially be saved for every organ donor.
22: People who die each day because the organ they need is not donated in time.
75: Number of lives that one organ, eye and tissue donor can save and heal.
2,092: Living organ donors so far in 2018.
11,491: Number of organ and tissue transplants conducted between January and April 2018.
114,892: Number of people awaiting a lifesaving organ transplant in the U.S.
95,129: Number of people awaiting a kidney transplant in the U.S.
1,309: Indiana residents waiting for a kidney transplant.
— Information from Donate Life America and the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network
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