Couples ‘swap’ kidneys, creating lifelong bond
Texan Jackie Killingsworth had been ready to donate one of her kidneys to her husband, Marvis, until a doctor called them with the proposal.
Lindsey Camp also needed a kidney, but her husband, Jentry, wasn’t a match. Jackie was, so the doctor called her Sept. 8 to suggest a swap. Jackie would donate to Lindsey, and Jentry would donate to Marvis.
Jackie had been prepared to donate her kidney to the love of her life. She’d never met Lindsey; she didn’t even know her name. But she knew the recipient was someone’s daughter, someone’s mother. She had to say yes.
“This is so much bigger than me,” she said. “Who am I to hold back?”
The Killingsworths and the Camps met for the first time on Halloween at Memorial Hermann Texas Medical Center, where the surgeries had taken place one month earlier. Those procedures provided new kidneys to Marvis and Lindsey, relieving them of the burdens of dialysis and renal diets. It also forged a lifelong bond between two couples who met as strangers but left feeling like family.
Jackie and Lindsey embraced the moment the Camps walked into the small room. Marvis pulled Jentry in for a bear hug and greeted him as “brother.”
Jentry said he thought about Jackie’s decision to donate her kidney to a stranger, rather than to her husband, as he and Lindsey drove to the hospital. He thanked her for the act of selflessness that saved his wife.
“That’s how life is supposed to be lived,” Jentry told Jackie. “You are what’s good in this world.”
There are some 92,000 people on the waiting list for a new kidney in the United States, and most wait three to five years for a transplant, according to the American Kidney Fund. Nearly 25,000 transplants were performed in 2021, with roughly 6,000 kidneys coming from living donors. The rest come from deceased donors.
Nationwide “swap” programs
emerged about 12 years ago, and since then more than 10,000 such surgeries have taken place, said Dr. Hassan Ibrahim, the director of the nephrology transplant program at Memorial Hermann. Jackie is known as a “Good Samaritan” — someone who could have donated to a family member or friend but chose to donate to a stranger.
“She did this out of the goodness of her heart to help someone else,” said Ibrahim, also a professor and director of transplant nephrology with Mcgovern Medical School at Uthealth Houston.
Swaps don’t just help recipients find living donors; they also help them find better matches. Although Jackie was a match for Marvis, doctors determined there would be a higher chance of success if he received a kidney from Jentry.
Marvis and Jackie, who live in Cypress, are both 58 and have been married 34 years. They met in college at Nicholls State University in Louisiana, around the time he learned he may need a kidney transplant one day. Marvis was about 20 years old when he was diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease, which causes cysts to develop in the kidneys. The genetic disease runs in his mother’s side of the family; his mother and four uncles needed transplants. He learned in 2016 that he’d soon need one, too.
Lindsey, on the other hand, was blindsided by the news that she needed a new kidney. The 43-year-old never had any serious health issues until 2018, when blood tests taken at a doctor’s appointment revealed her blood pressure and creatinine levels were through the roof. Her doctor called her on a Friday afternoon and told her to go to the hospital. Three days later, a nephrologist told her she needed a transplant.
“That was the first time I found out,” said Lindsey, who still isn’t sure what caused her kidney failure. “It was very shocking.”
By 2019, she needed peritoneal dialysis, a treatment that filters waste from the blood. For the next three years, she slept with a tube in her stomach that was hooked up to an at-home dialysis machine.
Jentry, 45, wanted to donate a kidney to his wife, but he wasn’t a match. The couple, who have been married for 17 years, have two children and live in Magnolia. Pregnancy causes immunological changes due to antibodies produced that lower the chance of success in father-tomother kidney transplants, Ibrahim said.
Jackie and Marvis have a son, but those immunological changes don’t affect mother-tofather transplants. Jackie could have donated her kidney to Marvis, and planned to do so until a Memorial Hermann doctor called to propose the swap.
Three types of tests — blood typing, tissue typing and crossmatching — are needed to determine a match for a kidney transplant. The chances of finding a match vary based on things like blood type and genetics, so the fact that Jackie was a match for Lindsey and Jentry was a match for Marvis was a bit of serendipity.
Jentry also needed to agree to donate his kidney to a stranger, but he said his decision was as simple as Jackie’s.
“If I had to give a kidney for (Lindsey) to get one, absolutely,” he said. “There’s not even a question about that.”
Just over two weeks later, Jentry and Marvis were checking into the hospital for their surgeries, which took place Sept. 24. The Camps’ daughter had her Sweet 16 birthday party the day before, so Jentry drove straight from the party to the hospital.
The surgery went smoothly. Jackie donated her kidney to Lindsey two days later in another routine procedure.
Their recoveries also went well; all four were largely back to their normal routines within two weeks. For patients Lindsey and Marvis, things were better than they were before the procedures. She no longer had to sleep with a tube in her abdomen, and he didn’t have to go for hemodialysis three times a week.
Another benefit is the fact that now neither Lindsey or Marvis have to stick to a strict renal diet. Lindsey was excited to eat Tex-mex again — she had to avoid foods like beans and cheese that were high in phosphorous. Marvis was looking forward to eating ice cream.
“It seems like I’ve been deprived to the point where I forgot that I was deprived,” he said.
Transplants are anonymous unless the donor and recipient agree to reveal their identifies, but the Camps and the Killingsworths knew right away that they wanted to meet. The couples quickly developed a rapport that’s typical of old friends after meeting on Halloween. Lindsey said she wasn’t surprised because the two couples now share DNA. “You’re my family,” Jackie told her.
Marvis has seen his mother develop a relationship with the sister of her kidney donor. Although they’ve never met, they exchange Christmas cards and have spoken by phone on the anniversary of the transplant for the past 31 years. He expects an even stronger bond will develop between the Camps and the Killingsworths.
“What we have here,” he said, “is beyond next level.”