Two strangers are now forever connected thanks to their medical team and as they say, a calling from God, and an answered prayer.
“It was a huge blessing,” Evangelist Barry Daniel said, as he recounted his story with 10 News alongside the woman who felt called to donate her kidney to him when he was in renal failure.
10 News met with them over lunch in Christiansburg as they were reunited for one of the first times since the successful transplant at UVA hospital.
“It’s just incredible how it worked out,” Nicole Thompson, a LewisGale Palliative Specialist, said.
Living organ donation
April is National Donate Life Month, a time to encourage organ donation. Many may think this is only an end-of-life decision, but it’s not.
In fact, according to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, research has shown that recipients of organs from living donors have better outcomes than those who receive organs from deceased donors.
In the United States, more than 100,000 men, women and children are on the national transplant waiting list.
Evangelist Barry Daniel of Alleghany County found himself as one of those statistics in 2023.
“They called it chronic kidney disease, and they felt like it was a combination of factors from birth, congenital, but also maybe high blood pressure issues," Daniel said.
The issue first started in 2016.
“All of a sudden I felt as if a 50 pound sack of potatoes had hit me in my lower back and went to the emergency room there at Roanoke Memorial and found out that I had a kidney stone, the only one that I’ve ever had to this day, lodged in one of my kidneys, my right kidney,” Daniel said. “The doctor said, Mr. Daniel, do you know that your left kidney has no discernible tissue function at all? And I said, no, news to me. I wasn’t symptomatic. I didn’t know anything about it.”
The condition worsened, and in 2023, Daniel was in renal failure and had to go on dialysis three days a week.
Daniel needed a new kidney. He was a candidate for organ donation, but finding a kidney would take some time. Due to better success rates with living donors, Barry was hoping to find a match and someone willing to donate. His father was tested and willing to give, but was sadly not a match.
The Calling
A revival in Christiansburg in September 2023 changed Barry’s life. Despite being in kidney failure, he continued to share the gospel as a traveling pastor.
“They said you need to go on dialysis, and so I spent 15 months on that,” Barry recalled. “Still traveling, still preaching, but in the chair four hours a day, three days a week.”
In February, he posted on Facebook about his situation and his search for a living donor.
Nicole saw his post. “I didn’t know him; he was an acquaintance,” she said. “I remember pausing and thinking, hmm, should I? And then I thought, ah, somebody else will do it. I kept scrolling. But little did I know then, the lord was kind of working on me in that time.”
In September of 2023, Nicole saw Barry at a revival she was attending at Faith Missionary Baptist church in Christiansburg.
“As a nurse of almost 32 years, knowing he was on dialysis, and yet he was still getting out and preaching and traveling, and it just really blew my mind. And to see him stand up, and I was assessing him. I’m a nurse, that’s what I do. His color was bad, and he looked a little peaked, but then he went on to preach like he was just fine,” she said. “It really humbled me. I remember standing there, and it just brought me to tears.”
Feeling compelled, Nicole decided to offer to be screened as a donor. Her prayer was answered—she was a match.
After many rounds of testing and follow up appointments, the transplant happened June 13, 2024.
"It was very exciting. I mean, people kept asking me, are you scared? Are you scared. And I can tell you honestly, I was never scared. I knew this is what the Lord had called me to do. You know, we’re all made with a purpose. And I knew without a doubt that this was part of my purpose," Nicole said.
“So I knew that he would take care of me and whatever happened, you know, I could trust him. So I never was scared. It was very exciting. I felt, you know, was really glad to have that opportunity to help him. As a palliative nurse, everything I do in my job is focused on quality of life. And so for me to be able to so directly impact Barry’s quality of life was just an amazing gift for me.”
“It was a huge blessing,” Barry said again, reflecting on the successful transplant at UVA Hospital. No more dialysis; he has a new lease on life and a continued sense of humor with Nicole.
“I heard you used to run 4 or 5 miles a day. I haven’t run 4 or 5 miles in my life,” Barry joked. “If you saw me enter a marathon, that was the kidney, not me.”
Above all, Barry is thankful. Both he and Nicole credit a higher power for their connection.
“I ask the Lord, please provide one, and you don’t know when it’s coming,” Barry said. “You trust Him, and He’s going to do it. You’d prefer a living donor because it’s so much better, but that’s a huge ask for someone to give you part of their body. It’s the gift of life.”
He added, “When Christ died for my sins, He gave me eternal life. That’s the greatest gift of all. But second to that has to be a second chance of physical life. And that’s what a kidney is.”
He gave her a gift, but says nothing could match the gift she gave him.
“And so I told her, I said, the best thing that I can do in response to what you’ve done for me is just make you a promise that I’m gonna keep on preaching the gospel. That I’m going to use the kidney for what you know that God’s called me to do and what prompted you to do it to begin with. So we’re forever linked, physically and spiritually.”
If you would like to become an organ donor, learn more here.