Tia Wimbush and Susan Ellis have been co-workers for a decade, and while they didn’t know each other well, they had a lot in common, both working in information technology at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and both dealing with the same medical stress at home: their spouses each needed a kidney transplant, and while Wimbush could have given her husband one of hers, she wasn’t an ideal match. Ellis, meanwhile, was no match at all for her husband.
One day, in the fall of 2020, the women saw each other in the office restroom and started chatting, lamenting that patients can wait five or more years for their name to come up on the national kidney cadaver donor waiting list. Both women worried their husbands didn’t have that kind of time.
Wimbush asked Ellis what her husband’s blood type was. He’s type O, Ellis replied.
Wimbush then said that her husband was type AB.
The women paused for a moment and looked at each other.
“I told Susan, ‘Wait a second-what are the odds that we’re both going through this with our husbands at the same time and we could also be in a position to help them?’” Wimbush says. “That’s when we both knew: We had to get tested.”
So they did. Antibody tests revealed that each woman was an excellent match for the other’s spouse. And in March 2021, seven months after that chance conversation, Tia Wimbush donated one of her kidneys to Lance Ellis, and Susan Ellis donated one of hers to Rodney Wimbush.
Christina Klein, a nephrologist and medical director of Piedmont Atlanta Hospital’s kidney transplant program, says it is extremely rare for two people to propose their own paired organ exchange and actually be a match for each other. “I’ve personally never seen this happen,” Dr. Klein says. “When we put pairs into large databases for national paired exchange programs, some pairs wait months or even years for a compatible match.”
The couples first met a few days before the surgeries when they came to the hospital for a final round of testing. Before that, they had chatted on FaceTime a bit. The surgeries lasted about three to four hours each and were a success, with no complications.
“It’s really just a story about simple kindness,” Susan Ellis says. “For us, it started with two people just being good humans. Now we’d like to tell people they can do the same.”
Rodney Wimbush says he will be forever grateful that his wife decided to bring up a conversation about blood types in the office restroom. “Susan and Lance are going to come with us to North Carolina for our son’s first college football game,” his wife adds. “I guess you could say we’ve skipped the friendship. We’re family now.”
【小题1】Tia Wimbush and Susan Ellis shared all the following EXCEPT that __________.| A．they worked in IT department | B．their spouses were in need of a kidney transplant |
| C．their spouses’ blood types were type O | D．they were good-hearted and unselfish |
| A．emphasizing the importance | B．expressing the disappointment |
| C．admitting the incapability | D．accepting the fact |
| A．it was a planned conversation that contributed to the kidney donation of Tia and Susan |
| B．Dr. Klein was amazed that two acquaintances should donate their organs to each other’s spouse |
| C．the couples didn’t chat until they went to the hospital for a final round of testing |
| D．Susan and Lance invited Rodney and Tia to watch their son’s football match in college |
| A．We are a match. | B．Friends develop into relatives. |
| C．Patient waiting pays off. | D．Rare surgeries a great success. |
