FAMILY RACES TO FIND LIVING KIDNEY DONOR FOR ELGIN MAN
When you ask Dave Thompson’s wife and daughters to describe him, they will say he’s unequivocally been there for his family during hard times.
Thompson, 68, traveled back and forth from his Elgin home to Florida to help his ailing mother for about 10 years before she died. He moved his father into his home and cared for him before he, too, died. He assiduously visited a cousin in a Veterans Affairs facility in downstate Illinois. When a car crash took the life of his sister and nephew, he stepped in to help his two other nephews.
“He put his family before anybody,” said Pat, his wife of 47 years.
Now, Thompson’s family is desperate to help him. With uncertainty about whether he’ll get onto a transplant list, and the prospect of a yearslong wait even if he does, Thompson’s wife and daughters are ramping up their own full-scale effort to find a kidney for him.
Finding a living donor — he needs someone with blood type O — will give him the best hope for a return to a normal life, his family and his doctor said. His wife and daughters said they would gladly donate a kidney, but they are not a match.
“He’s always put everyone else before him,” said his daughter, Stephanie Raap of Plato Center, who is spreading the word online at stepht23.simplesite.com. “I’ve been posting everywhere on Facebook . ... I keep saying next I will put flyers on my car.”
Thompson has had chronic kidney disease for about 15 years. A second stroke in September aggravated the disease. He’s lost nearly 40 pounds since then, and things recently took a turn for the worse. He was hospitalized Wednesday at Northwestern Medicine Delnor Hospital in Geneva and is expected to start dialysis soon.
“This has been beyond stressful,” Raap said, “because there’s not really an option. He needs a kidney.”
Thompson worked for the Chicago Tribune for 34 years and retired in 2007 as circulation information manager. He and his wife are longtime members of St. Paul’s United Church of Christ in Elgin, where he was financial secretary and treasurer.
Thompson said the last few weeks have been difficult — he’s tired all the time and has insomnia — but he’s comforted by the thought that people have started coming forward to be tested for donation. “You’d be amazed how many good people there are out there,” he said.