Take My Hand, Heart… and Kidney

When Bill Whitcomb met Marti Ring cleaning up the grounds around their church with fellow members, he was smitten with the beautiful, compassionate blond-haired woman. But shortly after the two began dating in 1997, he tried to fix her up with a doctor - a physician on his transplant team.

A month earlier, Bill had gone into kidney failure. "When you care about somebody, you don't want to drag them into your nightmare," he says in defense of his matchmaking efforts. "Marti was somebody on her way up, not on her way out." And Bill thought he was dying.

Bill, a construction worker, had lived with juvenile diabetes. Over time, high levels of sugar in his blood damaged his kidneys. When he hurt his leg on a construction job, he began taking Ibuprofen. The pain reliever exacerbated the problem, and Bill's kidneys stopped functioning.

Meanwhile, Bill and Marti's relationship moved forward. "Our idea of a hot date was putting two lengths of tubing on the dialysis machine so he could reach the couch and watch a movie with me," says Marti. The couple was married May 23, 1998. Less than two weeks later, Bill received a kidney from his brother, a living donor. In 1999, he underwent a pancreas transplantation, which cured his diabetes.

But the two operations took a toll on Bill. His body rejected the kidney, and he was hospitalized 13 times in the year following that transplant.

"He was in such bad shape they were shocked," recalls Marti. "He was immediately eligible for another transplant." This time, Marti insisted on getting tested to see if she was a match and could be a living donor. Bill was reluctant.

"I didn't want her to have any leverage. The nurses teased that a kidney was worth about five karats," jokes Bill, while pointing to his ring finger. Truthfully, he didn't want his wife to undergo major surgery. He changed his mind upon learning the organ could be removed with a laparoscopic procedure, meaning less pain, a smaller incision, a shorter hospital stay and a faster recovery than traditional methods.

In September 2003, Marti donated a kidney to her husband. She bounced back quickly, and the organ is thriving in Bill's body. As they celebrate another anniversary of the transplantation, the couple encourages others to consider the gift of life.

"I never had children, so being a living donor was a chance to understand what it's like to give life," says Marti. "It sounds cliché, but it's life changing. You can give people a second chance."

You have the power to save lives by becoming a registered organ and tissue donor right now or by saying "yes" when renewing your driver license or state ID at the BMV.