Massive garage sale planned for local father needing kidney transplant
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SHELLEY — Hundreds of people have donated thousands of items to help a local father battling kidney failure.
The result? One of east Idaho’s largest garage sales with all the proceeds going to the Shelley family.
The event was organized by Sandy Nellesen after she learned her neice’s husband, Drew Case, needed a kidney transplant.
“I thought, ‘I have a lot of stuff, my sisters have a lot of stuff and together we would really have a lot of stuff,'” Nellesen said. “We decided to sell our stuff and pick up other items from people who wanted to donate. We ended up with a huge room full of great things to sell.”
Nellesen said the sale is meant to help with the Case’s financial burden.
Drew first started experiencing flu-like symptoms in January. On Feb. 13, he went to the hospital and doctors determined he had complete kidney failure.
“It was really scary,” Randie Case, Drew’s wife, told EastIdahoNews.com. “They did biopsies for tests and the results were heartbreaking. He was in the hospital for about two weeks and ever since then he has done dialysis for 11 and a half hours every day while working full time.”
Randie says her husband was put on a transplant list in June, but they already had a plan in the works.
“My aunt, Anna Hatfield, went to see if she had the same blood type as Drew,” Randie said. “When she found out their blood type was a match, she started the dozens of tests to see if she could give one of her kidneys to Drew.”
The family learned in August that Hatfield’s kidney was a match for Drew and just last week they got the go-ahead to proceed with the transplant.
The transplant surgery is scheduled at Intermountain Medical Center in Utah on Oct. 18.
Nellesen hopes to raise enough money so the Case’s and Hatfield’s have to pay as little as necessary for the medical expenses.
The community is pitching in to help with the garage sale. Pacific Steel and the city of Shelley loaned tables and Broulim’s Supermarket in Ammon donated doughnuts.
The indoor garage sale will open Friday, Oct. 14 at 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and continues Saturday, Oct. 15 from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Click here to visit a Facebook page that has been set up for the garage sale and to see some of the items that will be sold.
The sale is located at 650 N State St in Shelley.