Thursday, May 17 was just another day for Realtor Paula Palmer. She woke up, exercised, went to work, came home and by 7:30 was preparing dinner. When the phone rang, her husband was closer, so the task of answering it fell to him. He hesitated, thinking it was another solicitor, but then picked it up anyway.
The lady on the other end asked for his wife. When Palmer took the phone, the caller said something she wasn’t expecting to hear for several more years:
“We have a kidney for you.”
Palmer had been diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease three years earlier. When the doctors told her about her condition, she said, “I don’t have time for this. I have a closing Thursday.” She took their advice, though, and started eating better, working out and reducing stress. She did not, however, ease up at work or let her illness bring her down emotionally.
“There was nothing I could do but wait, so I stayed positive and kept moving forward,” she says. While Palmer was not on dialysis, she did tire easily and would go to bed early so she’d be able to get up the next day.
Palmer had been on the list for two-and-a-half years, and she was expecting to be on it for several more, so when the lady from the transplant office called, she was shocked.
“She said a 16-year-old girl in Nashville had passed, and I needed to immediately pack a bag and go to the hospital. It happens that quickly,” Palmer says.
Palmer felt terribly about her young donor, and her thoughts turned to the girl’s parents. Remarkably, they’d decided to donate “everything.” She was healthy, so her heart, liver, kidneys, pancreas, skin and corneas all went to people in need.
When Palmer inquired about the kidney, the caller said, “It’s a nearly perfect match. You need to take it.”
Palmer’s husband had gone downstairs after giving the phone to her, so she went to the top of the stairs and tried to call him, but she couldn’t speak. Eventually, she got his attention and was able to tell him the good news.
With the clock ticking on the viability of the organ, seconds counted. However, by the time Palmer and her kidney had both arrived at Erlanger, where kidney transplants in Chattanooga are performed, it was too late to perform the surgery, so her surgeon elected to do it the following morning.
Palmer remembers only one detail about the procedure: Before her anesthesiologist put her under, someone brought her kidney into the operating room. She asked to see it, but it was in a box, so the person had to say no.
The surgery took four hours. By 1 p.m., Palmer was in recovery, her iPad in her lap and her phone in her hand. “I was working,” she says, laughing. “I had five closings coming up, so I had things to do. The nurses said they’d make me put everything away if I got excited.”
Palmer was able to relax, as everyone around her banded together to help. In the days and weeks that followed her surgery, the staff at Real Estate Partners, where she works, took care of urgent matters, such as closings. In addition, the agents on the other ends of the deals on which she was working also went beyond the call of duty to assist her.
Many of these people hadn’t even known Palmer was sick because she didn’t allow it to be a visibly debilitating factor in her life. “My doctors told me my positive attitude had a lot to do with how well I did after my diagnosis. I didn’t feel sick, although I know I was because now I feel much better,” she says.
One month after surgery, Palmer was back at work, and at the two-month mark, she was feeling like herself again.
Palmer not only feels great but also looks incredible. Since her surgery, she’s lost 20 pounds, she has energy to spare and the appearance of her skin has improved. “You don’t realize how much your kidneys do until they stop working,” she says.
Palmer also didn’t grasp how much she did until she stopped working, so these days, she’s taking more time to enjoy her good health. “I can go out with my friends and not have to worry about coming home because I don’t feel good,” she says.
Palmer also continues to be thankful for the family of the girl who passed. “Her parents did an amazing, unselfish thing, and it still overwhelms me,” she says.
Not surprisingly, Palmer now encourages people to become donors. Today, more than 80,000 people in the U.S. need a kidney transplant. To reduce that number, people can sign up to become a living kidney donor at the National Kidney Registry (www.kidneyregistry.org) or to become an organ donor at organdonor.gov.
“Look at how many lives that young girl saved. And look at the lives she improved. She not only touched the lives of the people who received her organs, but also of their family members,” she says.
Moving forward, Palmer will take the gift she’s received and use it to do what she does best: help others through her profession.
“I enjoyed life before and I stayed positive, but now when I get up, I say, ‘This is a great day,’ even if it’s storming outside simply because I’m thankful to be here.”