Blessed
By Phyllis Moore
Published in News on September 27, 2015 1:50 AM
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News-Argus/MELISSA KEY
Jerry Phillips smiles at his wife, Donna, while describing his excitement at being able to go to his first ECU football game this year following recovery from his recent kidney transplant.
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Jerry gives his wife, Donna, a kiss on the forehead, saying, "She takes good care of me." The couple have been surprised, honored and humbled by the chain of events that has led them to Jerry's lifesaving kidney transplant.
Call it a course of miracles.
From diagnosis to doctor to transplant to recovery, Donna and Jerry Phillips saw the chain of coincidences, chance meetings and connections that led them to not just a story of illness, hope and recovery, but one of precious gifts, new beginnings and gratitude.
While the road was not easy, the couple say their journey is an example of what can happen when despair and worry are set aside and faith takes the helm.
And God's hand, they say, can be found in every link, every step.
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Jerry Phillips' journey began when he was 7 years old.
No one knew what caused the black urine that put him in the hospital.
His teen years were active, and his life continued, all the way through a marriage and the arrival of a son.
Then, he started to feel rundown. Having a child is stressful, he thought.
It was in 1996 that he was diagnosed with Alport's syndrome, a genetic condition that could lead to kidney failure or most likely, a transplant.
"I'm a Pirate at heart, so I transferred my care to East Carolina," he said. "The care I received at ECU was wonderful. My doctor there told me her goal was to get me to 55 before I needed a transplant. She got me to almost 53, so she did well."
As his health progressively worsened, he was fortunate not to require dialysis. That was in his favor when it came time for the transplant surgery.
"When I reached the point, the threshold, which is having 20 percent kidney function, I was referred to the transplant clinic at UAB. It was down to 17 percent when I actually received my kidney," he said.
On Aug. 6, Phillips became the 50th transplant in a kidney chain at UAB Hospital, University of Alabama at Birmingham.
The chain of the gift of life started in December 2013 when donor Paula Kok offered to donate one of her kidneys to someone in need.
UAB is one of the leading hospitals in the South, Jerry said, and has performed the second most living-donor kidney transplants in the nation since 1984.
But that was not the only reason Donna and Jerry traveled to Alabama.
That chain started many years before.
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She wasn't a doctor when Jerry and Donna met Jayme Locke.
She had not yet graduated from Eastern Wayne High School, completed her medical education at East Carolina University and Duke or trained to be a surgeon at Johns Hopkins.
They met her first when she was one of the members of the youth group that Jerry and Donna led at First Baptist Church.
And the connection went even further back than that.
"My brother was associate minister at a church in Henderson when Jayme was a little girl. He dedicated her as a child," Jerry said. "My brother, Glenn Phillips, is now pastor at First Baptist all these years later."
That was part of the plan, Jerry said. Their paths were supposed to cross.
"Ever since Jayme was born or I was born, I guess," he said.
"There was never any doubt that we were following her wherever she went," Donna said.
And those days at First Baptist, they were important to Dr. Locke, too, a memory she carried with her as well.
"They played big roles -- teaching and mentoring -- as sort of my extended family," she said.
As a physician, her goal is always to restore life, she said. Having Jerry in her care gave that a whole new meaning.
This time it was also personal.
Typically, she said, she doesn't know the patients who come to her at the end-stage of disease. With Jerry, she had memories of him as vibrant and active, calling it "incredibly powerful" being in a position to help.
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Getting a donated kidney is not easy.
That is one of the beauties of the chain, Dr. Locke said, since about 50 percent of those who attempt to donate to a loved one cannot do so directly.
Members of Jerry and Donna's family volunteered to be donors. Donna's sister, Joy Dean of Chesapeake, Va., turned out to be a match but was likely a better match for someone else.
"So she was able to help someone else and still I was able to get a kidney that was a good match for me," Jerry said. "My donor, 37-year-old Janaka West, actually came from State Line, Miss."
And there it was -- two lives saved.
But getting there would not be easy, especially for Donna, who now had not only her husband, but also her sister, on the operating table.
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Jerry and Donna met at ECU.
"We were lab partners. We met over the dissection of a fetal pig," Donna says with a smile.
They celebrated their 30th anniversary in May and have one son, Zach, who is married and stationed at Fort Campbell, Ky.
The pressures of being a caregiver to her husband did not get her down, even when his health forced him to retire from O'Berry Center and left her the family's sole breadwinner.
Support from friends and family kept her strong -- even if sometimes the pressure was more than anyone could be expected to handle.
Faith helped guide her through the rough spots, she said.
"When you're faced with a medical crisis like this, and, of course, to Jerry's face I was the cheerleader at all times, but in the wee hours of the night, when I was having the fears and worrying about him, I just turned that over to God," she said.
Adding to the burden was who was in another bed -- her sister, who gave her kidney so that Jerry could get his.
"It was hard," Donna said. "And I had a lot of skin in the game -- my baby sister, Joy, who gave on Jerry's behalf, was a nurse so she knew what she was getting into."
Donna relied heavily on her doctor.
"She knew that I had Jerry on one table and my sister on the other," Donna said. "She told me early on, 'I'm going to take care of your sister. I will be there and so when your sister's kidney leaves her body I will receive it in my hands and deliver it.' And she did that."
The night before surgery, during a private moment with her sibling, Mrs. Phillips acknowledged the gift.
"I told her, 'You saved my husband's life,'" she said.
Another link in a chain of miracles, Jerry and Donna said.
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But the chain would not end there.
In the many hallways and rooms of the "huge, huge hospital," God's presence was constant, the couple said.
"We saw God's hand, the way things lined up. I mean, how could you not believe His hand was there?" Donna asked, recalling one particularly poignant moment the morning of the surgery when a male nurse, obviously familiar with the case, approached them.
"He introduced himself and said, 'I understand you have a son named Zach who is serving in the Army, and I want you all to know that I'm retired Army and today,' he said, 'Dad, today' -- it's going to make me cry," Donna said, her voice catching. "'I want you to know that today I have Zach covered in prayer, soldier to soldier.'"
A look of relief came over Jerry's face.
It had worried him that his son could not be there.
And in a moment, that worry was replaced with comfort in the knowledge that there was another connection, another link, another blessing.
"The look of relief that came over Jerry's face, because Zach couldn't be there the day of surgery, and so for that particular nurse with that particular military branch, same branch (was priceless)," Donna said.
And Jerry would be part of a chain, too, a comfort for someone else who seemed to have been placed in his path for a reason.
When Donna joined her husband in pre-op, she saw Jerry holding a nurse's hand.
"He's rubbing her hand and he says, 'And I want you to know that everything is going to be just fine,'" she said. "(I later) found out what that conversation was about -- that nurse in his pre-op room had found out the day before that her 14-year-old son had just been diagnosed with Alport's syndrome."
What are the chances that nurse would have been in Jerry's room on that day? Donna thinks she knows.
"God used him in that moment to encourage that nurse and to let her know that science, medicine had advanced and your son's going to be perfectly fine," she said.
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The transplant was a success and the couple are now back at home.
They came home in time to celebrate their 53rd birthdays -- Donna's on Sept. 14 and Jerry's three days later.
As Jerry recovers, he said he is feeling well and getting stronger every day.
He still requires clinic visits and anti-rejection medication.
They are not out of the woods yet.
But Jerry and Donna will get through the next weeks with the confidence that comes from the knowledge that their path is set.
And they are grateful -- not just for the family and friends who rallied around them, but also for those who give of themselves to save the lives of others.
They will be forever connected to the members of the kidney chain.
And that is why they decided to tell their story -- to say thank you.
"I never wanted to do a story about me. I wanted it to focus on the donors because without the donors, there wouldn't be people like me," Jerry said. "What a wonderful gift to give somebody. I'm forever grateful."