We have a donor.
On August 17, I got the official word from Wake Forest that I’ve been approved as a living kidney donor for my wife, Julie.
That sentence is incredibly easy to type. Getting to the point where I could type it wasn't nearly as easy.
So before this journal becomes a place for updates about surgeries, dialysis, transplant, recovery and everything else that's coming, I figured we should start with how we got here.
This Started Long Before Me
I met Julie in 1995, and it didn't take long for me to learn that kidney disease was part of her family's story.
Her grandmother on her father's side had passed away from kidney failure. When Julie and I met, her dad was just beginning dialysis. He would eventually receive a kidney from a deceased donor and get years with that transplant that he wouldn't have otherwise had.
Julie's younger sister, Kaye, also has PKD. In 2017, Kaye received a kidney from a living donor — giving our family a firsthand look at what living kidney donation could mean for someone with this disease.
So transplantation and kidney disease aren't things our family discovered recently. They've been woven into Julie's family story for generations.
Julie has Polycystic Kidney Disease, or PKD — a genetic disease that causes cysts to grow in the kidneys and, over time, can cause the kidneys to lose function.
For most of our life together, though, PKD wasn't something that defined every day. We got married, raised our family, worked, traveled and did all the normal things people do. PKD was always there in the background, and we certainly knew what it was capable of doing.
Eventually, the background started moving to the foreground.
By around September 2024, Julie's kidney function had declined enough that she was listed for a transplant.
And that's when another part of this story began.
Could I give her one of mine?
Trying to Become Her Donor
When Julie was listed for transplant in 2024, I started the process of being evaluated as her living donor through Atrium Health in Charlotte.
I knew going into it that being willing to donate a kidney and actually being healthy enough to be approved to donate one are two very different things. What I didn't expect was just how long and complicated that road would become.
The evaluation stretched well into 2025. Along the way, there were concerns about my smoking history, my A1C history and even a short period of time I had taken Zepbound.
I quit smoking in January 2025, but ultimately Atrium Charlotte decided they couldn't approve me as a donor.
That was our first no.
But it wasn't the end of the road.
A Second Chance at Wake Forest
In September 2025, I went through another full living donor evaluation, this time at Wake Forest Baptist.
A lot of it looked good. My kidney function was good. The scans looked good. The testing showed that, in many ways, I was a very healthy potential donor.
But there was still concern about my A1C and how my body handled blood sugar. During the glucose tolerance testing, my blood sugar climbed to around 160 and then dropped all the way into the 50s.
Ultimately, the transplant committee decided they couldn't approve me either.
That was no number two.
This one was harder.
At that point, I had already quit smoking and had gone through two transplant centers and a lot of testing. I was willing to give Julie a kidney. My kidneys were healthy. But willingness wasn't enough — the transplant teams also had to be confident that donating one wouldn't put my own long-term health at risk.
So for a while, that was where things stood.
Deciding to Try One More Time
I wasn't quite ready to accept that answer.
In January 2026, I made another change and stopped drinking sugary soda. It sounds like a small thing, but after the concerns about my A1C and blood sugar, I wanted to control the things I could control.
By the summer of 2026, Julie's kidney function was continuing to decline, and I kept coming back to the same question: Was there really no path forward for me as her donor?
In early July, I decided it was worth asking Wake Forest to take another look.
This time, instead of simply asking to be reevaluated, I started pulling everything together — years of A1C results, previous lab work, health history and even data from my Apple Watch. I wanted them to be able to look at the whole picture, not just a couple of numbers from one evaluation.
We put all of that together and wrote a letter asking Wake Forest to reconsider me for living donation.
And they said yes.
Not yes to the kidney.
Not yet.
Yes to giving me another chance.
One More Evaluation
On July 29, 2026, I went back to Wake Forest Baptist for another full evaluation.
This time felt different.
I met again with the transplant team, went through the testing, labs and consultations, and for the first time in this process, it started to feel like there might actually be a path to yes.
The social worker and surgeon had no reservations. The nephrologist was comfortable moving forward as long as the remaining labs and testing came back where they needed to be.
There were still a couple of loose ends. A lab needed to be repeated, and Wake ordered genetic testing to make sure there wasn't something hiding in my own DNA that could make donating a kidney a bad idea for me later in life.
So we waited.
On August 7, the transplant committee reviewed my case again. This time, they approved me pending the results of the genetic testing.
After everything it had taken to get back into that room, we were suddenly one test away.
Ten days later, on August 17, Julie and I were at Wake Forest Baptist for one of her appointments.
My transplant coordinator saw me there in the room with Julie.
And after nearly two years, two transplant centers, two previous no's and more testing than I care to remember, she got to deliver the news to both of us in person.
I was officially approved to donate.
So What Happens Next?
Getting approved doesn't mean we're at the finish line. It means we finally have a path to get there.
Julie's kidneys have continued to decline from PKD, and there's still a lot ahead of us before transplant day.
The plan is to remove both of Julie's native kidneys first. Her kidneys have become extremely enlarged from PKD, and the concern is that if they continue to grow, they could eventually cause problems for the new donated kidney.
That means there will be a period between that surgery and the transplant when Julie will need dialysis while she recovers and we prepare for the next surgery.
It's not going to be an easy stretch. There are major surgeries ahead for Julie, dialysis in between, a transplant to coordinate, and then recovery for both of us.
And if the last couple of years have taught us anything, it's that plans in the transplant world can change.
But there's one enormous difference now.
We have a donor.
For the first time, we're no longer trying to figure out if I can give Julie a kidney.
We're preparing for when I do.