Woman saves 2 lives after being inspired by dad’s kidney failure journey

DENVER (KKTV/Gray News) - A decision made by a Colorado woman out of the love she has for her father has gone on to impact not only him, but a stranger in need as well.

In 2015, an autoimmune disorder destroyed Tommy Buckley’s kidneys in a matter of months.

Kelli Strother, Buckley’s daughter, said her dad was “bigger than life.”

“He was a cowboy. He was a guy who I thought was invincible,” she said. “And to see him not feel good, not be able to do the things he loved to do.”

As later-stage patients often are, Buckley was put on dialysis.

“When you reach the dialysis level, it is saving your life, but it is not necessarily a great quality of life,” Strother said. “It is time-consuming, limiting.”

Strother said her father’s condition at the time made her feel helpless.

Hundreds of miles away near the Texas/Oklahoma state line, another family was grappling with a similar situation.

Willayna Williams was only in her 40s when her kidneys started failing.

Now in her 50s, she had entered the late stages of kidney disease.

In the advanced stages, chronic fatigue, nausea, swelling, severe itching, migraines, and just a general sense of weakness and sickness are among the day-to-day symptoms.

Kidneys no longer function well, requiring hours every day or every other day plugged into dialysis machines. Without dialysis or a transplant, it is fatal.

Williams’ husband Early, a pastor at a Baptist church in Vernon, Texas, wanted to save his wife’s life by becoming her donor. But despite a wonderful marriage with children and grandchildren, they learned from doctors that they were incompatible in one area: Williams’ body wouldn’t accept Early’s kidneys.

‘A lightbulb went off’

In Colorado, Strother was becoming more involved with the regional chapter of the National Kidney Foundation, first through her job, and then as a resource to cope with her father’s worsening condition.

She regularly talked to donors and transplant recipients, but it would be one conversation in particular that proved life-changing.

“At this point, living donation didn’t seem practical because I knew so little about it. It didn’t seem like something I could do,” she said.

She said she then met an elementary school teacher in Denver who had recently received a kidney.

When she asked about his story, he said one the parent of one of his students donated their kidney to him.

“It was like a lightbulb went off,” Strother said. “I said to myself, ‘This is a parent of a student. Why on Earth am I not giving my kidney to my dad?’ It was just that ‘Ah-ha!’ moment you hear about.”

The tragedy for so many Americans on the transplant waiting list is that the number of people in need far exceeds the number of organs available.

According to data from the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN), in 2017, 115,000 people were on the waiting list for an organ donation.

The number of available donors was 16,473.

According to the National Kidney Foundation, people die every year waiting for a kidney.

KKTV is intimately acquainted with this stat, having lost a friend and coworker to end-stage kidney disease a few years ago at just 36. He had been on the waiting list for more than two years.

Living donors are critical but they are also hard to find.

For Buckley, if his daughter were a suitable donor, he would be one of the lucky ones to not have to go on the waiting list.

For Williams, that was her only option.

These two families were about to collide.

‘You’re a match’

Strother went through all of the steps necessary to become her father’s donor. In March of 2019, four years after her dad first went on dialysis, she got the call she’d been praying for.

She was a match.

“I‘ll never forget ... It’s one of those times that’s emblazoned in your mind forever,” she said.

Then the doctor told her something else.

“‘You match your father. But you also match a woman who is in our system that can’t take a kidney from her husband because of antibodies,” the doctor told her. “Would you be willing to give your kidney to this other person in our system?’”

In what was nothing short of miraculous, these complete strangers -- Stother and Buckley, Willayna and Early -- were matches for each other. Early was unable to donate to his wife, but was a suitable donor for Stother’s dad. Williams couldn’t take her husband’s kidney but was a match for Strother.

“I had one question,” Strother said. “‘Does my dad’s outcome change to take a non-familial kidney?’ And they said, ‘Absolutely not.’”

Then the doctor told Strother that she could “get two people off dialysis in one day.”

On May 23, 2019, these two people did get off dialysis in one day.

‘Are you sore as hell?’

Strother said the effects of the kidney donation were immediate for her father.

“He had his color back ... he felt better than I did post-surgery because he had just been so sick,” Strother said.

Strother said recovering alongside her father was a funny experience.

“When I first got to go in and see him after transplant, I walked in, and the first words out of his mouth were, ‘Are you sore as hell, Kelli?’ ‘I’m sore as hell, Dad,’” she said.

She said the experience ended up being fun for her.

“It seems really silly to call it fun, but you can’t … there’s nothing really more bonding than that and to experience that and just have that connection,” she said.

Strother said her recovery was swift, just several weeks of soreness and some weight restrictions. In the five years since, her life and body are completely normal.

Despite having one kidney now, Strother said it has not had a big impact on her life.

“This is truly an instance where we were given a spare organ and we can live a healthy, long life,” she said.

On advice from the transplant team, Stother and Buckley weren’t allowed to meet Williams and Early before or immediately after the procedure.

Several months later, Strother reached out through the transplant center.

She said she waited for a long time to meet the other pair. Then, right before the pandemic hit in 2020, she said she received a phone call from Early.

“I was in an Uber and I just started bawling,” Strother said.

Strother said it was thanks to Early that her father had been able to return to the world his failing kidneys cut him off from.

“It was really special to see him get to engage in the things he loved the most again,” Kelli said.

Williams also got decades of her life back.

“She’s a mother, a grandmother, a preschool teacher. So all of these things that she could energetically return to because she was off dialysis and feeling wonderful,” Strother said.

The COVID-19 pandemic complicated things for the two families to meet each other in person.

However, after a time of waiting for it to be safe, the two donors and two recipients were finally able to meet face to face.

Strother said the meeting was “indescribable” and said the two families became one.

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