When Tony Gonzalez of Illinois demanded that an organ donor be freed from the dialysis machine that kept him alive despite his failing kidney, an Arizona woman named Joely Sanders stepped up.
Sanders’ brother, Frank Pompa, also needed a new kidney after one of his failed. And most importantly, Gonzalez’s wife, Tracey, provided the crucial organ donation in October to free him from his dialysis machine.
The cross-country story of generosity that forever intertwined the lives of the Gonzalezes, Sanders and Pompa went viral, providing some relief to typically grim American news cycles after several media outlets – including television stations in Tucson, Arizona KGUN And COLD – reported it on Thursday.
As the station related, Pompa learned in 2019 that he had only 10% kidney function. He received physically taxing treatments twice a week from a dialysis machine, which mimicked the function of the failing organ by removing toxins from his blood.
Sanders looked into donating one of her kidneys to her ailing brother, but she was not a match.
“I was disappointed and thought: what are we going to do now?” Sanders told KGUN.
Yet she realized what a healthy kidney could do for someone in need. Still interested in helping someone, a living kidney donor program operated by Banner University Hospital in Tucson matched her with Tony Gonzalez, 55.
The Gonzalezes, meanwhile, realized that Sanders’ brother Pompa, 44, had suffered kidney failure, was undergoing dialysis and needed the kindness of an organ donor himself. And despite the slim odds, Tracey Gonzalez was a match, paving the way for her to donate her kidney to Pompa.
Banner surgeons removed Sanders’ kidney and took it to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Chicago, KGUN reported. In turn, surgeons in Chicago arranged for Tracey Gonzalez’s kidney to be rushed to Tucson for Pompa’s benefit.
The turn of events left Pompa and Tony Gonzalez among approximately 17,000 people in need of a kidney donation who receive one annually.
More than 101,000 people in the US need that specific organ donation every year. And about a dozen people die every day waiting for that donation without getting it the National Kidney Foundation.
Aneesha Shetty of Banner Hospital told KOLD that living donors can narrow the gap between supply and demand. “The gap between people waiting and supply and demand continues to grow,” Shetty told the channel.
Both families met and thanked each other during an emotional video conference on Thursday.
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As reporters and others looked on, Pompa thanked the Gonzalezes and Banner and said, “It’s been a long journey.”
Pompa explained that he wanted to go camping and hunting once he got better, while his sister said she was looking forward to traveling with her husband, according to the Chicago Tribune. The Gonzalezes discussed their dreams of a European vacation.
“Thanks to you, you saved my husband’s life, and now I have a brighter future with him,” Tracey Gonzalez told Sanders and Pompa. “So thank you.”
Tracey’s husband batted away an attempt by Pompa to call him “Mr. Gonzalez,” as the Chicago Tribune reported.
It’s ‘Tony, please,'” Gonzalez said. “We are connected now.”