By Jamie Strickland
Some people might consider scrolling through Facebook to be just a waste of time, but for Guillermo Solares, it literally saved his life.
Selma resident Adele Walker came across a post asking for help in finding a match for Solares, who desperately needed a kidney transplant, and decided to get tested even though she had never met him before.
“I had always had the desire to donate, whether it be bone marrow, a kidney or part of a liver…so I went to Duke and got tested,” she said. “A couple of weeks later I was notified that I could donate and I was a match. Since I didn’t know the recipient, I contacted my friend (who made the Facebook post) and told her I had been tested and was a match. She was totally surprised. She called Guillermo on the phone and we were on a 3-way call. She introduced me and allowed me to tell him the news that I had been tested and was approved to donate my kidney. They both cried and I was very emotional too.”
For Solares, who lives in Forsyth County, the road to receiving a new kidney was long and frustrating. It took three years of constantly complaining of pain in his lower back on the left side before his doctor took it seriously and ordered kidney tests.
“I named it as kidney pain but she said we can’t feel pain coming from our kidneys and I had to exercise more in my lumbar area,” Solares said. An avid racquet ball player, he also walked an average of 5-8 miles each day. “ I thought that was enough and I tried to ignore the pain.”
A year later, the pain had only gotten worse and his doctor ordered physical therapy. “I started it, but after 3 to 4 months doing it 3 times a week I didn’t notice any improvement, so I decided to stop it. For another year, seeing her every 3 months, I continued reporting my pain and in about September of 2022 I asked her if she could please order a kidney ultrasound because I was sure it was related to my kidneys,” he said.
In November of 2022, the results showed that he had stage 4 kidney disease and his filtration level was at 29 percent. He was referred to a nephrologist and the next two years were spent jumping through hoops and coordinating with providers and insurance to get on the list to receive a kidney from an organ donor.
A severe skin allergy to plastics made him a poor candidate for dialysis. If he developed a skin infection, he would have to go on antibiotics which could cause further damage to his kidneys.
He was running out of time, and options.
He began working with the National Kidney Registry, an organization dedicated to increasing living kidney donation. “Once they accepted my story, my wife started sharing my story everyday on Facebook and Instagram…and that is when a big hope arrived,” Solares said. That’s when he received word that Walker was willing to donate.
“I asked her, ‘Why me?’ and she said, ‘My whole life I always wanted to do something like this for someone,’ and when she read my story she heard God’s voice telling her… this is him!”
Walker said she had faith that this was what she was supposed to do and trusted God throughout the process.
“I know we are all put here on earth for a purpose and I truly believe God gave us an organ to be able to help others and help them survive,” she said. “It’s easy to give money and do things when you have time but to actually save a life is an amazing feeling.”
After a couple of weeks of rest and recovery, both Walker and Solares were back on their feet and feeling good. The new kidney started working almost immediately for Solares and aside from not being able to take ibuprofen anymore and not being able to lift anything heavy for a while, Walker is not expected to have any long term issues.
Both Walker and Solares are on a mission to encourage people to find out more about the process of kidney donation and Solares plans to write a book about his experience to help others navigate through the process.
To learn more, visit The National Kidney Registry online at nkr.org.
“For living donors they get many benefits if they enroll through this organization,” Solares said. “They can help in many ways, like reimbursements of salaries lost while in recovery after donating an organ. Also paying airfare and hotels while doing the testing and many more things like life insurance in case anything may go wrong with the living donor for the family. Also, they have coaches that speak English or Spanish and they will assign one coach for the patient and a different coach for whoever enrolls as a living donor and will help explain the process. There is a lot of education on this website and it could help save many lives.”
