HEY, I GOT CUE, BUDDY
Pool rival kidney donor
He was a good friend to have in his pocket.
A Pennsylvania man who once blasted his pool rival in a bitter Facebook post handed him the ultimate apology by giving him a kidney a decade later.
Russ Redhead discovered James Harris Jr. needed a kidney while competing at a pool tournament. He donated the organ to his former foe Feb. 8 at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore.
“James needed me to hold his hand,” Redhead, 42, said with a laugh as he recalled being rolled into surgery. “So, I reached out and said, ‘It’s going to be OK, buddy.’ ”
“The whole time, [he was] cracking jokes and having a good time, and I’m in there scared to death,” Harris, 54, said Wednesday.
While they both say they’re “BFFs” now, 10 years ago they were battling for an all-expenses trip to a Las Vegas pool tournament. When Harris pulled ahead, Redhead fired off a disgruntled Facebook post accusing him of an unfair advantage.
“I’ve never seen this guy before . . . he started running balls on me and I’m like: ‘Oh, OK, I can’t underestimate this guy,’ ” Redhead said.
He took the post down, and eight months later they saw each other at a local game in Maryland, where Redhead “apologized for the whole outburst,” Harris said.
The two started getting more friendly when they’d see each other at Maryland tournaments.
At another pool tournament in November 2022, Redhead, of Lancaster, Pa., ran into Harris’ wife, Denise Epps-Harris, who told him her husband needed a kidney.
After Harris fell ill with COVID-19 in December 2020, doctors found a blood clot and told him his kidneys were hardly functioning. He had eight surgeries, a dialysis catheter placed in his chest and had to quit his job as a truck driver.
“I was like: ‘Wow, he hides it really well’ . . . he still shot pool great,” Redhead said.
Match made in heaven
Epps-Harris mentioned what was required from a living donor and the former Marine knew he could do it. That’s when the process of becoming “kidney buddies for life” began.
For over a year, Epps-Harris and Redhead communicated while he went through extensive testing to see if he was a match. All the while, Harris was in the dark — so as not to get his hopes up.
The day of the surgery, doctors told the pair that Redhead’s organ was the “Cadillac of kidneys.”
Harris is scheduled to enter his first tournament since his transplant in Glen Burnie, Md., his hometown, on April 20.