Donor Erica Turner decided to become an altruistic donor, offering one of her kidneys to a stranger.
"I was actually listening to an NPR story about a kidney donor and everything he said made sense. There's tons of people who needed it," said Turner
Her kidney went to Arless Wells of Dallas whose friend Alexia Cruz offered a kidney to whomever might be a match.
That recipient was Buddy Whitt whose wife Melissa kept the chain going but donating to Daniel Madron, in Temple.
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"I didn't believe it the whole way!" said Madron, during a taped virtual reunion between all six people in the transplant chain.
"There's tons of people who needed it and it was life-changing to some people. It was something that I could live without," said Turner of her life-saving donation.
Baylor Scott and White Health had performed a three-way paired kidney exchange at three of its Texas hospitals, Baylor University Medical Center, Baylor Scott & White All Saints Medical Center - Fort Worth and Baylor Scott & White Medical Center - Temple.
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"It's fairly rare, probably less than 1% of transplants, and maybe 10% to 20% of paired exchange transplants. For us, I would say very rare for within our system to be able to do a three-way paired exchange. Typically a three-way paired exchange occurs between multiple centers of different systems, sometimes across state lines," said. Dr. Eric Martinez, Baylor Scott and White transplant surgeon.
The donors and recipients say they all are doing well after their surgeries.
"I really liked the donating process. I don't want to say it was easy, but it was a lot easier than what I thought it was going to be and I feel like if more people knew about the process and how easy it is to be able to change someone's life, I do believe that more people would do it," said Cruz.
