Bob Kuykendall said that, to the average person, his story looks like the feel-good kind that makes the 6 o’clock news.
A young father desperately needed a kidney. Kuykendall gave it. And everybody’s doing great.
“But that’s not exactly what happened,” Kuykendall said. “It’s not just a story about a kidney transplant. This is a story about two guys getting the gift of life.”
Kuykendall was a self-proclaimed deist the day he walked into a Birmingham-area coffeehouse to meet up with Greg Hasberry.
“I was a person who believed in God but doubted His involvement with us as we struggle through life, hoping for the best,” Kuykendall said. “I was growing more and more resentful toward people who credited God with various and often stupid decisions.”
But as he walked into the coffeehouse that day in 2015, he realized he really had no idea why he was there. The two men had met years before at the gym and the day before they met for coffee Hasberry had found Kuykendall’s number in his phone. He called to ask him a work-related question that he thought Kuykendall could answer.
He could.
“In fact, I could have answered it quickly so I’m not sure why I didn’t just answer him right then on the phone,” he said.
“For some reason I felt compelled to ask him to meet me for coffee. And even as I walked in to meet him I kept thinking, ‘I’m too busy to do this today — why did I suggest it?’”
The reason began to get a little clearer when he noticed the scars on Hasberry’s arm from his kidney dialysis port and started asking questions.
“I had no idea he had kidney problems and I had never really known anyone who had to be on kidney dialysis,” Kuykendall said.
He found out Hasberry had been on dialysis several times a week for the past several years. His kidneys were failing. Hasberry’s brother had offered to donate a kidney but he wasn’t a match.
Hearing from God
“I felt this feeling that no one can explain, the same feeling that people in the past have said they get when they hear from God,” Kuykendall said. “In the past I’ve been the cynical guy that says no way. But the feeling was undeniable. And I knew why I was there.”
Kuykendall went home and started talking with his wife about the prospect of donating a kidney to Hasberry.
“We Googled so many things, starting with ‘can you die from donating a kidney,’” Kuykendall said. “After talking for a while we decided to table the idea.”
That was a Wednesday.
On Friday, Kuykendall moved his daughter to Auburn and while his family was eating lunch the owner of the pizza place caught his attention.
“He was really charismatic and I thought, ‘I’m going to go meet this guy,’” he said. “It was really weird — once again I had no idea why I was doing it. I had the same feeling that I’d had when I met Greg for coffee.”
He went over and introduced himself and they struck up a conversation. After talking for quite a while — much to the bewilderment of his family — about things like football and lacrosse the topic took an unexpected turn.
“He mentioned that he only had one kidney — that he’d donated a kidney to a student eight years ago,” Kuykendall said.
“He said it was the best thing he’d ever done. We talked for a while about what it had involved and what it meant to him.”
On the following Monday, Kuykendall called UAB Hospital in Birmingham.
After a barrage of tests and doctors saying it was an improbable match, they said Hasberry’s condition was so progressed they would give it a try if he was as much as a 20 percent match.
It’s a match
“They were hoping for 40,” Kuykendall said. And when the results came back he was an 80 percent match, the highest the surgeon had ever seen in his 30 years at UAB.
God had sent Hasberry a kidney donor, Kuykendall said — but He’d also sent Kuykendall a newfound faith.
It was a faith that Hasberry shared and he began to help fan the flame.
“It was a God process — it was definitely divine,” Hasberry said.
And the two are joining up these days to share their faith, help people face the mountains in their life and raise awareness for kidney donation. They are training to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, this June as part of a group they’re calling Team Mountain.
It’s about encouraging people in their life, encouraging them to make time to help others and encouraging them to explore their faith, said Kuykendall, who attends Double Oak Community Church, Birmingham. Many of the people he meets now are struggling in the same way Kuykendall was before he met Hasberry and met God.
The four-year process for Hasberry wasn’t just about his kidney, Kuykendall said. “I believe God was working on a two-for-one kind of deal.”
For more information, visit teammountain.org.
Share with others: