Local third-grade teacher recounts his wait for kidney transplant
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BLACKFOOT — Five months ago, Tyler Wood got a call with an exciting question.
“Are you willing to drive to Salt Lake today to go get a kidney?” An organ donation coordinator asked him.
It had been three years since Wood received a different call from his doctor, telling him he was experiencing kidney failure. He had since been looking for a kidney, but found out no one in his family shared his blood type, O negative.
He hadn’t been able to find anyone who shared that blood type. According to the Red Cross website, only 7 percent of the population has it. Someone with O negative blood can only receive that same blood type.
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In June, he was told his kidneys were functioning at 15 percent and his symptoms were getting worse.
“Everything was going downhill pretty quick,” Wood said.
He was tired and couldn’t enjoy activities he used to with his family, like biking and hiking. The next week, he was supposed to go on dialysis.
He was also worried about his job as a third grade teacher at Fort Hall Elementary School. He was wondering how he would keep teaching with his worsening condition.
“My energy was completely gone. I didn’t have an appetite, didn’t want to eat anything. And then my muscles were just cramping up constantly on me,” Wood recalled.
His family was getting more worried about him as his symptoms worsened. Wood said the fear of dying had crossed his mind. His wife and kids kept him going through this time.
“I just wanted to be their dad,” Wood said.
Before the call that changed his life, the Woods had been told there might be a kidney match for him, but he didn’t have much hope.
“My wife was more optimistic than I was,” Wood said. “This is going to be another one of those where they say, ‘Oh, it was close but not close enough.'”
A Bannock County Sheriff’s Deputy named Albert Luce had died after a tragic accident. His wife, Lori, asked that his kidneys be donated to Wood and another man from Blackfoot. They were told there was only a two percent chance it would be a match.
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But then, as they were sitting in church on Sunday, July 9, they got the call. The kidney was a match.
“I jumped on it,” Wood said.
His wife, Cimbrian, and he dropped their four sons off at a relative’s house and hurried to Salt Lake City.
“It was pretty much just a blur of emotions going through me. Excitement, fear,” Wood said.
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Wood slept through the surgery and woke up with a new kidney.
“(It was) a miracle in my mind that it was happening at that time so that I could be with my family again and not have to have these fears of not being there anymore,” Wood said.
Wood says that he still feels tired, but he has been recovering.
“We’ve been slowly making it there and things have just really progressed,” he said. “If you ask my family, they say I’m back.”