OGDEN, Utah – A doctor told Jason Anderson that he had end stage kidney failure 18 years ago, when he was just 30-years-old.
“You’re going to die. That’s what he told me,” Anderson said.
He’s spent that time spending six hours a day on dialysis, while his wife, Monica and three kids struggled to imagine a future without him.
“Being depressed, sad, sick, (that’s) what our plan was,” Monica Anderson told KSTU.
Monica Anderson works at Intermountain Homecare in Ogden. In January, her colleague, Kingslee Teo, overheard her talking to her husband on the phone about recent test results.
“(He) just started asking questions about the whole kidney transplant process,” Monica Anderson said.
Teo quickly realized they had the same blood type.
“I used to donate blood in high school all the time to get out of class,” Teo said.
After discussing it with his wife, Teo decided to commit to six months’ worth of testing.
“It’s amazing just that anybody would want to do that, let alone a coworker,” Monica Anderson said.
Teo passed every test and ended up being the perfect match for Jason Anderson.
“I knew him, but my concern was, was he aware of what he was getting into. Was he aware what the commitment was,” Jason Anderson said.
Two weeks ago, Teo donated one of his kidneys to Jason Anderson.
“I called him my personal Jesus. To me, he’s my savior,” Jason Anderson said.
Teo said one of his motivations behind the donation was a simple hope that someday, someone may pay it forward.
“In the future, if something happened to one of my family members, one of my children, someone would step forward,” Teo said.
A priceless, life-saving gift from someone you didn’t expect.
“We could start making plans to have a life,” Monica Anderson said.
Since the surgery two weeks ago, both Jason Anderson and Teo are feeling great. Jason Anderson said he hasn’t felt this good in thirty years.
