【N.J】 A N.J. household wanted a miracle. They bought one — from Facebook and an entire stranger. – New Jersey News

The key remained buried in her coronary heart for 4 infinite months.

Toshira Maldonado-McIntosh wished to imagine the reply to her prayers was actual, at the same time as she watched the dialysis therapies drain her husband.

At the same time as she watched Roy McIntosh solely develop weaker.

The daddy of 5, a once-burly beginner boxer, had joined the deceased-donor kidney record in October 2020, shortly after a severe case of COVID-19 aggravated his lifelong renal issues and his kidneys started to fail.

In December 2021, the Mays Touchdown man was nonetheless ready.

So Maldonado-McIntosh known as on larger powers — God… and Facebook.

“Please pray for my husband that God sends a type B+ living kidney donor to him,” she wrote on “The Laughing Christian” group web page Dec. 21, referring to his blood sort. “We believe in God for a miracle.”

Her reply took place half-hour later.

A whole stranger from Texas provided greater than prayers when she learn the anguished submit. Heather Schaefer, 33, provided one in every of her kidneys.

However Maldonado-McIntosh couldn’t inform McIntosh, 48. Not but. Not till she knew the provide was actual. Not till she knew Schaefer was a match.

So she stored it a secret.

“I thought it was a hoax,” mentioned Maldonado-McIntosh, a 42-year-old youngster welfare social employee and McIntosh’s spouse of 24 years.

However with one Facebook submit, a girl from Texas — by the use of Scotland — was about to vary the lifetime of a West Indian man from the Jersey Shore.

On June 8, docs at Medical Metropolis Fort Value Transplant Institute in Texas eliminated Schaefer’s left kidney in a four-hour process. The ice-packed organ was flown to New Jersey, the place docs John Radomski and Nasser Youssef implanted it in McIntosh that very same day at Virtua Our Woman of Lourdes Hospital in Camden.

In a society fractured alongside the fault strains of race and politics and tradition, a white lady from the reddest of purple states donated an important organ to an entire stranger 1,500 miles away, a Black man from blue-state New Jersey.

And she or he did it for only one cause. To assist somebody.

“I’m grateful and thankful for the gift of life she gave me — a total stranger,” mentioned a visibly moved McIntosh as he sat in his huge yard behind his cream-colored, four-bedroom ranch house. “Heather said to me, ‘When God tugs at your heart, how can you tell him no?’

“She has faith. I had faith. It just came together.”

He was the final to know in regards to the donor who would change his life.

When Schaefer was lastly authorised April 8, a Virtua transplant coordinator knowledgeable McIntosh.

“I called my wife, who was driving, and I said, ‘You need to pull over!’” mentioned the 6-foot-3 man with a shaved head and goatee, flashing a smile to his spouse as they relived the second.

“Of course, I already knew,” Maldonado-McIntosh mentioned.

That’s when she stuffed him in on all that had led as much as the information.

McIntosh now appears like a brand new man, he says.

He returned to his job Sept. 7 as a plant engineer at Virtua Well being & Wellness Middle in Camden.

“I have more energy. My blood pressure has come down. My doctor has given me the OK to go back to the gym. I can ride my bike again,” mentioned McIntosh, whose youngsters vary in age from 10 to 25. “We walk two miles on the Atlantic City boardwalk twice a week.”

McIntosh by no means appeared to have it straightforward.

He suffered from kidney issues since he was born — the doable results of X-rays finished on his mom whereas she was pregnant with him, the McIntoshes mentioned.

“His mother was a 15-year-old immigrant having a baby in America, and she didn’t have the right testing or proper prenatal care,” mentioned Maldonado-McIntosh, who added that McIntosh’s mom hails from Grenada and Trinidad and his father from Trinidad.

His well being solely suffered additional throughout the three years he bounced from foster house to foster house as a younger youngster. McIntosh endured neglect and abuse, he says.

“I don’t want to get into it,” he mentioned. “I was in four foster homes. It was bad.”

Later, McIntosh moved into the Newark house of a maternal aunt, then went to stay along with his mom when he turned 13. Whereas bladder issues and pediatric hypertension typically despatched him to the hospital, a extra severe well being drawback went undetected.

McIntosh wasn’t correctly recognized with renal points till 2017. After struggling congestive coronary heart failure, he was advised his kidneys have been barely functioning. He underwent an eight-hour surgical procedure to reconstruct his ureter, a tube that forces urine from the kidneys to the bladder. Throughout that surgical procedure, a health care provider found he had pelvic lipomatosis, a uncommon illness through which extra fats develops within the stomach.

When COVID-19 landed him within the hospital in the summertime of 2020, his kidney perform plunged. Dialysis grew to become his solely choice.

A physician advised him his kidneys have been “only functioning at 15%,” McIntosh mentioned.

He started present process dialysis 3 times per week for 5 hours at a time.

He misplaced weight. He might barely sustain with actions he loved, similar to figuring out and reducing down timber on his property.

However McIntosh, an amiable man with a simple smile and can-do spirit, had religion that buoyed him via his darkest moments. Even when no donor was within the offing, he envisioned having a brand new, wholesome kidney.

“I thanked God for the kidney before I got one, before I had a donor,” he mentioned, explaining that in the event you converse to God as in the event you’ve already gotten the blessing you’re hoping for, it should come to go. “I mentioned, ‘Thank you for the kidney you gave me.”

In the meantime, McIntosh continued living the best life he could.

“I kept working. I went to church every week. I did yard work,” McIntosh said. “I had the will to live.

“I had my family.”

As the transplant neared, McIntosh reached for that faith. He was confident he would recover.

“I said, ‘God’s in cost.’ I had religion it will go properly,” he mentioned.

In the meantime, Schaefer — a mom of two, ages 6 and 4 — had run into some resistance. When she advised her husband, Nicholas — a U.S. Military captain (soon-to-be main) and Blackhawk helicopter medevac pilot — that she wished to donate a kidney to a stranger, he was involved.

Would the donation have an effect on their capacity to have extra children? Was she risking her personal well being? What if her remaining kidney failed?

Schaefer was firm.

She had all the time wished to assist others. She had finished intensive analysis on being a donor and concluded it was protected, she mentioned.

Her husband, deployed in Europe, ultimately got here round. By the surgical procedure, he supported her choice.

Schaefer underwent a battery of checks to make sure she was a great candidate and her kidney was a match for McIntosh. She started posting a sequence of movies on YouTube, “Adventures with My Kidney,” explaining her journey as a donor.

As soon as upon a time, kidney donors and recipients wanted to be in the identical hospital for surgeons to carry out transplants. However a Nationwide Kidney Registry program permits a person to donate a kidney with out touring to the recipient’s transplant heart.

“It is easier for the donor,” mentioned Jennie Roggio, the dwelling kidney donor transplant coordinator for Virtua Superior Transplant & Organ Well being, in a press release. “Heather was able to complete her tests and prep work close to home. The Texas hospital approved her, and then sent us her chart to accept her kidney for donation.”

The night time earlier than the surgical procedures, almost 30 individuals — most of them relations and mates of McIntosh and Schaefer — held a prayer vigil over Zoom.

Schaefer obtained a textual content from Roggio the following night, whereas within the hospital in Texas after her kidney was eliminated. It was being implanted in McIntosh at that very second.

“I was so happy,” mentioned Schaefer, who was born to American dad and mom in Scotland, the place she lived till she was 16.

McIntosh “was not in any danger of dying” when he obtained the kidney transplant, mentioned Radomski, the transplant surgeon. However it probably will delay his life significantly.

“People who get a kidney transplant live longer than people on dialysis,” he mentioned, including that dialysis “is time-consuming and disruptive to one’s life.”

Nobody has to inform McIntosh.

“My kids are happy to have me home more now,” he mentioned. “I used to spend 15 hours a week getting dialysis.”

McIntosh additionally was lucky to obtain a kidney from a dwelling donor, Radomski mentioned. In any other case, his watch for a transplant might have stretched to 6 years. Between 2004 and 2017, the ready record for a deceased-donor kidney grew from 58,000 to greater than 92,000, in accordance with the Mayo Clinic.

Well being consultants say the scarcity of kidney donations constitutes a public well being disaster.

Deceased-donor kidney transplants account for two-thirds of the 20,000 transplants carried out every year within the U.S., in accordance with the Mayo Clinic. However transplant recipients expertise higher outcomes with dwelling donors, analysis has discovered.

On April 15 — per week after she was authorised as his donor — Schaefer and McIntosh noticed one another for the primary time via a FaceTime name.

“I was crying. Heather was crying. My wife was crying,” McIntosh mentioned.

On Aug. 3, Schaefer and McIntosh — having each regained their power from the transplant surgical procedures — lastly met in individual. She traveled to New Jersey together with her two youngsters.

“I said to Heather, ‘You’re my sister,’” McIntosh mentioned. “I have a piece of her in me.”

The McIntoshes gave Schaefer a West Indian silver bangle with fist ends, symbolizing power. McIntosh wears an identical bracelet on his proper wrist. Schaefer has invited them to spend this Thanksgiving at her house in Harker Heights, a central Texas metropolis of 33,000 sitting between Dallas and San Antonio.

“We feel like a family now,” she mentioned.

Jni McIntosh, 22, is thrilled to see her father more healthy than he’s been in a very long time.

“He always said, ‘Honey, this is going to be OK. We’re going to push through this together,’” she mentioned. “He would have his sad days. On those days he’d be quiet. He wasn’t as talkative or active as he was on other days. But those days were so few.”

The substitute instructor mentioned she was moved by the selflessness of “a stranger from Texas” giving her father “another chance at life.”

“I hope she inspires others to do what she did and save a life,” Jni McIntosh mentioned.

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Elizabeth Llorente could also be reached at ELlorente@versuszone.com. Observe her on Twitter @Liz_Llorente.