CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Charlotte attorney Noah Allen had always been able to endure, even mask, a lot of pain. But by the fall of 2016, severe muscle cramps were waking him up in the middle of the night, leaving him writhing, crying and dripping with sweat.
His wife, Haley, eight months pregnant with their second child, knew she had to do something: Parts of Noah’s body weren’t working anymore and, without a transplant, her 26-year-old husband could die.
“We’re the Allen family,” Haley, 27, wrote in a blog she posted Oct. 15. “We serve a selfless Savior who’s the glue that holds us all together. Yet, we’re searching hard for a certain missing piece in this little puzzle called life. We’re searching for a kidney for my husband.”
Haley’s words landed all over. In Fuquay-Varina, N.C., just south of Raleigh, a casual friend of Haley’s from college saw a link to the blog on Facebook.
She read it, then showed it to her husband.
Health food
At 19, Noah had been diagnosed with “membranous nephropathy” — a form of kidney disease that’s usually diagnosed much later in life.
Chronic disease became his new normal. He had to change his diet and regularly monitor key numbers that measure kidney function. After about a year, things stabilized.
Clinical remission, they called it. Noah still had kidney disease, but it wasn’t progressing.
Haley met Noah in February 2011, when both were students at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, because she was experiencing decreased kidney function due to diabetes. One of her doctors — an endocrinologist — recommended she follow a low-sodium diet.
A friend of Haley’s who’d once dated Noah suggested she contact him for information. He was writing his senior honors thesis on eating a healthy renal, or kidney-friendly, diet.
Haley, a self-described girly-girl, liked what she saw when Noah — handsome, 6-foot-tall, with a gift for conversation — arrived at her sorority house in his big blue truck. After introductions, he took her to a grocery store, Earth Fare. They loaded up on chicken, sauces and other healthy foods.
Next, they went to his place, where he cooked up a delicious low-salt dinner for two. And then they talked, and talked, until 2 a.m.
In 2015, a year after their wedding, Noah passed the Nortn Carolina bar exam in Raleigh and took a job in Charlotte with Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft — the oldest New York-based Wall Street law firm still in existence.
Suddenly they could afford the best medical supplies and treatment for Haley. A pump to deliver her insulin cost $10,000 after insurance. That, plus their daily diligence in monitoring blood sugar levels and correctly using the tools they now had, brought Haley’s diabetes under control. Son Charlie was born in July 2015.
A month later, Noah started seeing a nephrologist — a kidney doctor. Dire symptoms had returned.
‘Stay strong for Noah’
In Charlotte, Noah and Haley had moved into an uptown condo.
Haley stayed home with Charlie and, early in 2016, got pregnant with their second son, Gentry.
But by then, Noah’s numbers — the ones measuring kidney function — had gone “off the deep end,” as he would later describe it.
Remission had ended; damage control began.
He met with medical specialists, flew to New York to get a second opinion, tried various treatments and drugs, and even spent time in the hospital.
Nothing seemed to work.
As his kidneys lost their ability to clean his blood, he retained fluid, causing his feet to swell and forcing him to wear driving loafers rather than dress shoes.
And those agonizing muscle cramps — caused by a buildup of sodium, potassium and other “electrolytes” usually kept at constant levels by the kidneys — robbed him of much-needed sleep.
Most of all, Haley prayed. Many others did, too. At nearby First Presbyterian Church, where Noah and Haley were active, the prayer ministry team invited the couple to tell their story, then huddled together with them in prayer.
In October 2016, Haley and Noah attended their first meeting with others who also needed a kidney transplant. Most were much older, in their 40s to 60s.
Nationally, about 100,000 people are on a waiting list for a kidney from a deceased donor. The average wait: three to five years. Too long for many of them.
The best kidney, they were told at the meeting, is from a living donor.
Hearing that, Haley knew what she had to do.
The next day, she started her blog:
‘Do you know this guy?’
Why would you consider donating a kidney to someone you didn’t really know?
Amy Bardi and husband Wyatt came up with at least two answers as they read Haley’s blog in their Fuquay-Varina home.
Wyatt, 25, saw it as a tangible way to live out his Christian faith, to be that Good Samaritan — that loving neighbor — that Jesus spoke of in his most famous parable.
And for 27-year-old Amy, who had lost two babies through miscarriages, it would be a gift to Noah and Haley’s two baby boys — one due to be born the next month.
Amy had known Haley slightly in college and the two had been bridesmaids in a mutual friend’s wedding. But Wyatt didn’t know Haley or her husband.
Like Haley and Noah, Amy and Wyatt had met each other in Columbia. They went to different schools — she was a student at the University of South Carolina, he attended a small Christian college called Columbia International University. But as members of the same evangelical church, they were asked to co-lead a service project in New York.
Reading Haley’s Oct. 15 blog, they saw another opportunity to give.
So, on the morning of Nov. 1, Amy sent her a Facebook message.
“Hi friend!” it began. “I’ve been keeping up with your blog and your amazing efforts to find a kidney for Noah. … My husband Wyatt has also been following along. He’s A+ and is ready to see if he’s a match for Noah.”
Kidney brothers
Haley messaged back: “Amy … You’re kidding me. I don’t even know what to say. … I am beyond humbled you and Wyatt would even entertain the thought to help us. I know it’s such a massive decision and act of selflessness.”
A day or two later, Wyatt made an appointment at a lab to have his blood drawn. He also began filling out the paperwork.
Wyatt’s interest seemed like an answered prayer to Haley. But Noah had to be convinced. He didn’t know Wyatt and somebody he knew well — his mother — had offered one of her kidneys.
But she was smaller and older. It made more medical sense for his living donor to be another man. Plus, Wyatt was young, 5-foot-9, and, the tests would reveal, very healthy.
But the stunner came months into the process, with the tissue typing test. Donors are given three numbers, each judged on a scale of 1-10. Three zeros would signal the donor and donee are, genetically, identical twins. And 1-1-1 would be the numbers for genetic siblings.
Wyatt’s score: 1-1-1. “Kidney brother” would become Noah and Wyatt’s nickname for each other.
Noah got his new kidney from Wyatt on March 14 at Carolinas Medical Center.
Noah’s old kidneys had been functioning at 9 percent. And when they cut him open, it was so acidic, so toxic, inside that they had to wait two hours before they could complete the transplant.
“You were walking dead,” the surgeon later told him.
Noah’s new kidney could be good for 20 years or more.
Noah, with his high tolerance for pain, was up and about before Wyatt, who had a smaller 4-inch scar but hadn’t been in the hospital since first grade. So Noah walked down to Wyatt’s hospital room to deliver the Apple watches he had bought for them.
Walking into Wyatt’s room that day, seeing him lying there in pain, Noah broke down, suddenly overwhelmed with love and gratitude for this guy who had saved his life.
“A piece of you is inside of me,” he told his kidney brother. “I’m alive because of you.”
