INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - Richard Walters, 52, Sheridan, met Tony Davis, 40, Indianapolis, at the Marsh Supermarket in Castleton in late 2013.
They worked the meat counter.
Davis hired on while Walters was on medical leave. Walters had been working a slippery chunk of pork through a meat saw when something happened, and he lost his left pinky finger to the saw. When he returned to work (minus the pinky), he and Davis became co-workers. They were friendly but not actual friends. They didn’t see each other outside of work. Not once did they go to lunch together.
One day during the Thanksgiving rush of 2014, Walters was in the back cutting meat, and Davis was manning the counter. Davis was deluged with customers. Walters saw this and came up front to help him wrap.
“Tony turned to me and said, ’I appreciate what you do for me,’ ” said Walters. “And I said, ’I’d do anything for you, brother.’ He said, ’How about a kidney?’ “
Walters hadn’t known Davis was sick and on dialysis.
“Well, when he asked me that,” Walters said, sounding like a poet but also like someone who works with meat, “I had a feeling like the blood left the top part of my body and went below. Because the top part of my body got cold, and then I felt the rush of the blood coming back up and I got warm again.
“It took me a delay of three seconds, but I said, ’OK, a kidney - let’s do this.’ “
Davis was stunned because he’d not been serious in asking this casual acquaintance, this work buddy, for a body part. “I said, ’You serious!?’ ” said Davis. “Richard’s like, ’I’m serious.’”
This story is not that uncommon. Humans are born with two kidneys, but need only one. People frequently give up a kidney to help someone whose kidneys have failed, friends, family members and complete strangers. Walters’ and Davis’ story is one of hundreds of such stories. Even so, there’s a waiting list for kidney transplants, and nationwide about 80,000 people are on it. The wait can last five years, and some 4,500 people die every year waiting.
Walters is a churchgoer and has always considered himself a Christian. “But I’ve strayed quite a bit,” he said, “like, I was drinking and driving when I was young.
“But there’s people who helped me out and helped me see things differently and live differently.”
While in the Army in Germany in the 1980s, he had a head injury and for a while was in a coma. When he came out of it, he said, “I started realizing I have to give back because I’d been spared. I wanted to be one of those people who have a heart for people in need and who help.”
Walters sponsors a child in Nicaragua, tithes and in early 2014 underwent medical tests to see if his kidneys would be compatible with Davis. They were.
But there was an obstacle: Walters was overweight. A doctor told him he’d have to lose 25 to 30 pounds or there’d be no surgery.
Much to Davis’ relief, Walters was willing to do the hard work. “He’d bring his lunch, and he’d show me what he brought - baked potato, salad, fruit, not much meat, no red meat, maybe some fish,” said Davis.
The meat cutter lost 30 pounds by cutting out red meat.
Then, another obstacle: It was becoming obvious to Walters that Marsh was not thriving. The Indianapolis-based grocery store chain closed eight stores in 2014 and four more the next year. Rumors of its demise swirled. “I could see it going downhill,” Walters said, “and I had a chance to go to Kroger.”
He bailed on Marsh and took a job at rival Kroger at the 161st Street and Spring Mill Road store. He felt relief.
But he couldn’t go on disability until he had been with Kroger for a year.
“I was freaked out, and I backed off a little bit from Tony,” he said.
“Richard called me one night and told me he had some bad news,” said Davis. “He was like, ’Well, I’m going to have to back out of our deal.’ I don’t know if he told me the reason why. He was having second thoughts of giving up an organ. I mean, it was giving up a body part. I really couldn’t blame him.”
Davis looked elsewhere for a kidney. “I reached out to other people - friends of mine, family members of mine - to see if they were interested in giving up a kidney. There was one guy, a friend of mine, who’d have done it but I was too late, he’d already given up a kidney.”
About three months, later Walters called Davis to say he’d changed his mind again, and that the deal was back on.
Part of the organ donation process is getting the OK from a mental health professional. “I talked twice to a counselor,” said Walters. “They wanted to make sure I wasn’t doing this to harm myself or on a whim. Mainly they wanted to make sure I was mentally stable.”
On May 19, a kidney was removed from Walters and placed in Davis. It is working well. Davis said he is feeling “good, really good.”
Walters feels “good,” he said, but is still sore from the incision and won’t be back to full strength for another three months. But he has stayed on his new, improved diet and expects that to enhance the quality of his life long-term.
He feels great about what he did for a fellow human. He’d do it again if he could, which he can, sort of. “There’s this friend of mine that needs a liver,” Walters said. “I’m going to talk to doctors and surgeons because you don’t have to give your whole liver, and your liver grows back in a year.
“I’m thinking, ’You know what? I could do this again.’”
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Source: The Indianapolis Star
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Information from: The Indianapolis Star, https://www.indystar.com
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