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Michelle Hiskey
Columbus
John Richey started running a dozen years ago, just before turning 40. A pharmacist by trade and Methodist by belief, he saw that the sport's economy fit his way of life and his personality. He needed only a pair of shoes and a little bit of time, and he could easily measure his improvement by how much farther he could go.
He never ran fast, but he ran consistently, early in the morning. It was his time to think and pray. A neighbor told him about the Peachtree Road Race, and Richey entered, although with some anxiety. He got up in the middle of the night to make the two-hour trip to Atlanta, and got to the starting line two hours before the race. He never had run 6.2 miles, and he worried whether he would get up "Cardiac Hill" near Piedmont Hospital.
But the energy from the thousands of other runners in the world's largest 10K boosted his spirits, and he finished without a snag. That rush was all he needed to keep doing the Peachtree each year --- and to keep running year-round to stay in shape.
Nine or 10 minutes, that's how long he would take to finish a mile. Three miles a morning, three days a week. Year in and year out. "It just makes me feel good," was Richey's reason for running.
He never realized it would help him save his best friend's life.
Two decades ago, Richey met Charlie Wright at Wynnton United Methodist Church. Wright worked for AFLAC, an insurance company, as a computer programmer. He played softball, sang bass in a barbershop quartet and always seemed to be in a good mood.
The two men and their wives hit it off right away. They had children the same age, and soon they were sharing meals, holidays and vacations. The couples shared their dreams for their children and retirement.
But the main connection remained their church, where Wright sang in the choir and Richey could be found doing such projects as painting walls. The Richeys particularly appreciated the church's emphasis on grace, that anyone could receive a place in heaven simply by accepting it. While on earth, they believe, they were here to help others, and true joy comes by "going beyond what you are supposed to do," said Richey's wife, Saunders. "It gives life meaning when you go beyond yourself."
Over the years, Richey and Wright became closer than they had been to their own siblings. Sometimes Wright teased Richey about his running. "You fool!" he'd say, laughing. "I'll drive and pick you up when you're done."
They leaned on each other when Wright was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1993. He had surgery, but doctors weren't sure if they had removed it all. He went in for radiation, but it left scar tissue around his kidneys. They started to fail, and a series of surgeries could not bring them back. By late 1998, he was on dialysis.
Infections became more frequent, and doctors removed both kidneys in September. His most likely chance for a new kidney rested with his sister. But she didn't match.
Three times a week, for four hours at a time, Wright was hooked up to a dialysis machine. His body weakened as it started to metabolize muscles instead of fat. When he went to pick up a prescription at Richey's Plaza Pharmacy, he fell out of his truck and couldn't get up.
Wrights last hopes were his sons, but their blood types didn't match. If they couldn't donate a kidney, he might be waiting several years for one. That might be too long. Last year, 3,088 people died waiting for a kidney. Sixteen people die each day waiting for some organ.
Wright shared his discouragement with the Richeys at supper one night.
"What blood type are you?" Richey asked his friend.
O positive, Wright replied.
"I'll go get tested."
"Are you sure?
"Yeah, I'm sure."
In October, Richey took a blood test that would reveal whether proteins on a gene in the sixth chromosome of DNA were compatible with Wright's.
"It's terribly unusual that, randomly, someone who is a best friend (of a recipient) is a genetically reasonable donor," said Dr. David O'Brien, a urologist at Piedmont Hospital who has taken part in 900 kidney transplants.
The test results wouldn't come back for six weeks. But the Richeys already knew what lay ahead.
"I think I'm going to be a match," Richey told his wife when he came back from giving blood.
"I think you are, too," she said.
When the test results came back positive, he still could have backed out. The hospital didn't tell Wright he was positive, so Richey could have kept the information to himself. The hospital would just tell Wright that his friend didn't match.
But Richey knew he couldn't do that. A little twinge went through his throat, but it was his only hesitation, even though he knew that the decision would change his life. He spent more time mulling over a possible job change than he did giving up his internal organ.
"There are just some things in your life you know you are supposed to do," he said.
His four children weren't surprised. "Just don't give both of them away," his daughter Erin, 27, told him.
The next night, at the Wrights, Richey couldn't find a way to tell them he was a match. As he was leaving, Shirley Wright took him aside. She was upset.
"What you don't know, John, is that the boys didn't match," she told him.
"What you don't know, Shirley, is that I do," Richey replied.
"Are you sure that you want to do this?" she said, knowing that her husband's chance of survival would be increased if he didn't have to wait for a kidney from someone who died.
"Yes," Richey said. "I am."
People rarely show up at the hospital to give an organ to someone not related to them. Donations from unrelated, living kidney donors are becoming more common, but such Good Samaritans still are uncommon. Of 4,454 kidney transplants performed last year and reported to the United Network for Organ Sharing, only 230 --- barely 5 percent --- were donated by someone the recipient didn't know.
Richey, like all donors, went through a battery of tests. Physically, he turned out to be a perfect donor, at least partly because he was in good condition from running.
At 52, Richey "was reaching the upper limit" of age to donate a kidney, but "running probably kept him in top physical condition, enough to be a donor," O'Brien said.
Wright didn't worry, either. "I didn't have any fear for John's health or kidneys because he's always taken good care of himself," he said.
Doctors also evaluated Richey's mental health, to make sure he didn't feel forced into this. They constantly offered him a way out, knowing that donors even have changed their minds while getting prepped for surgery. The doctors cover for them, telling the recipient something went wrong medically so the would-be donor would be spared any guilt.
Still, Richey insisted, he would give his kidney. But other obstacles remained.
At first doctors thought they could perform the surgery by removing the kidney through a small incision that would allow a rapid recovery. But Richey had a surplus of arteries to that organ, so surgeons had to perform a traditional open surgery.
It meant he would miss work for six weeks. He couldn't afford to close Plaza Pharmacy for that long, so his friends rallied to raise money so he could hire someone to fill in for him. AFLAC raised $4,000 at an employee cookout, and the church set up a fund.
Meanwhile, Richey watched Wright's skin turn more ashen. His face looked more tired all the time. He needed a walker to get around; getting to church was a major expedition. Richey felt like time was running out.
The Sunday before the men went to the hospital, 500 members of their church gathered around them, hands touching shoulders, at the front of the church to pray. The pastor, Glenn Martin, also thanked God that two friends had been matched so perfectly.
"Organ transplant is not covered in the Bible," Martin said later. "But there's a lot of talk about self-sacrificing. Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend."
Richey didn't lose any sleep, didn't check into his life insurance provisions. He recalls no fear during the Jan. 10 surgery. He felt a peace he ascribed to God. He spent six days recovering, and during that time he wondered if he would be out on Peachtree Street below by summer, if he would recover enough to be part of the race.
"I sure hope you get to do that," Shirley Wright told him. Seeing Richey get moving again would ease some of the concern they had for him.
Back in Columbus, Richey returned to work quicker than expected, but he still couldn't stay on his feet much. He walked a little for exercise, but when he tried to jog, it hurt too much.
By March, he felt good enough to run a little. A half mile and then a mile.
"His good physical conditioning not only made him an acceptable donor but helped him recover quicker and smoother," O'Brien said.
Part of the healing for Richey was watching Wright. With Richey's kidney, Wright could walk again on his own, sing in the choir and return to work.
Six months after surgery, the two men struggle to explain how they feel about the gift. Richey doesn't want to come off as a hero, although people stop him almost every day to tell him how generous he is.
Wright, 54, jokes that they are now "kidney-in-laws." He hadn't written a poem since the early days of his marriage, but he gave Richey one he composed in the hospital.
About a year ago I found my body was sick and things were getting worse.
I realized there was absolutely nothing I could do, nothing I could earn, nothing I could buy that would make things better.
Then a friend, John Richey, said I have what you need. Accept this gift I offer, my kidney, and it will make you whole.
That's when I learned the meaning of love.
On Tuesday, Richey expects some of the same butterflies he felt in his first Peachtree, when he wasn't sure if he would make it to the finish. This is his 13th in a row, but his first with the fresh pink scar that stretches 10 inches from front to back on his right side.
His doctor is not surprised that Richey is running so soon. The one kidney has taken over almost all the work done by his original pair, the doctor said, and there is no reason he can't do anything he used to.
Midway through the race, Richey knows that he will pass Piedmont Hospital and think about everything that happened on the third floor there in January and how he left in a wheelchair. And how part of him is now inside his friend.
Not many people can look back and pinpoint the day they changed someone's life. Richey can. It is a gift he never imagined receiving.
Copyright © 2000 Cox Interactive Media.
This article posted July 5, 2000.