Gilbert mother hits the streets to secure kidney for husband
Jan 31, 2019, 12:00 PM
(Facebook Photo/@AKidneyforLeigh)
(Facebook Photo/@AKidneyforLeigh)
PHOENIX – A family in Gilbert has learned how giving the world can be when a desperately needed kidney donation for a husband and father was finally lined up.
Amy Jascourt, who has been using her car’s rear window to advertise for a kidney for her husband Leigh, told KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Mac & Gaydos on Wednesday that the living-donor surgery was scheduled for Feb. 13.
“I thought there was no way there .. is there really people out there that are willing to give an organ out of their body while they’re alive?” she said.
Her husband’s deteriorating condition made him ineligible for the typical deceased-donor transplant list.
The mobile billboard pleading for the kidney led to 45 people signing up to donate. One of the potential lifesavers didn’t match Leigh, but did match someone else in the Mayo Clinic’s paired-organ donation.
In that program, doctors find a match through pairs of other incompatible donors and recipients who are registered at one of their three hospitals.
For the Jascourts, it was an answer to their social media and auto-driven prayers.
“It was amazing. I put it on my car not even having a clue what would happen. Would people make fun of me? There were a few that questioned whether it was for real on social media.”
The day after she came home with the sign — her husband had no idea she had planned that — “somebody waved me down and pulled me over to the side of the road. Honestly, it made me nervous but I knew what it was about.”
The woman applied to be a live donor but wasn’t a match. She and Amy remain in touch.
Leigh, who was diagnosed with kidney disease in December 2016, undergoes home dialysis six times a week. A recent checkup showed his heart was still failing, “but he’s well enough to get a kidney,” Jascourt said.
Everyone else in the chain has to be healthy, too, for the transplant to happen.
Her husband has a couple more tests scheduled before the operation.
Jascourt set up a GoFundMe account to help defray the medical costs.
