We’re a Match!

Tia Wimbush and Susan Ellis have been co-workers for a decade, and while they didn’t know each other well, they had a lot in common, both working in information technology at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and both dealing with the same medical stress at home.

Their spouses each needed a kidney transplant, and while Wimbush could have given her husband one of hers, she wasn’t a ideal match. Ellis, meanwhile, was no match at all for her husband.

One day, in the fall of 2020, the women saw each other in the office restroom and started chatting, lamenting the fact that patients can wait five or more years for their name to come up on the national kidney cadaver donor waiting list. Both women worried their husbands didn’t have that kind of time.

Wimbush asked Ellis what her husband’s blood type was.

He’s type O, Ellis replied.

Wimbush then said that her husband was type AB.