A desperate mother found a donor… on Facebook. It happened in Wales, where a woman called Karen Davey, 42, found herself desperately needing a kidney transplant and, in desperation, wrote a heartfelt appeal on Facebook in the hope of finding a compatible donor, as she saw her health conditions worsen.
The woman, who lives in Rhondda Cynon Taf, a town a few kilometers from Cardiff, has four children and, just when she was losing hope, she met her ‘savior’. Gary Summerfield, 60 years old and a security guard by trade, had just returned from the night shift when he read the post and contacted her, later discovering that he was compatible and undergoing the operation last July.
“I was lucky to find someone like Gary. There are good people out there, who want to help others. He is simply my hero. He is an amazing person inside and out,” Davey told the Mirror, “I loved getting to know him and we will continue to be friends. My family will be forever grateful.” The woman had suffered a heart attack ten years ago, while watching her son’s football match, for which she was forced to have a heart transplant: “I already knew that at some point I would probably need a kidney, because the drugs I take for the heart are toxic to the kidneys.”
Just as she feared, three years ago doctors discovered that her kidney function was worsening: “I quickly entered the third stage of kidney failure. And everything gradually got worse from there.” All her friends and family underwent checks to assess their compatibility with the aim of donating a kidney to her, but none were found suitable: “That’s when I launched the appeal on Facebook. It was an important decision, but we explored all the possibilities and thought: ‘Well, let’s try it and see what happens, we have nothing to lose anyway’. And in fact several people responded.” Among them was Gary: “I felt an irrepressible desire to help her and her family. What struck me was that she is a very similar age to my daughter”, said the man.
After consulting with his loved ones, Gary decided to start the donation procedure: “He was absolutely certain that he would not hold back at any time, because even up until the day of the operation he could give up at any time, as it was a major operation”, said the woman, “he reassured me by saying that he would not change his mind and explained to me the reasons why he wanted to do it”.