Wilmington woman offers a gift from the heart

May 25--Just another crazy lady.

One more nut.

These were Jennifer Doyal's thoughts as she read the email from a Wilmington woman who wanted to give her a kidney.

Doyal, a 37-year-old Georgia resident and mother of three, had good cause to be skeptical. Since she'd started a Facebook page explaining her need for a transplant, the crazies had come out of the woodwork.

"People from other countries were trying to sell me their kidneys," Doyal said.

So when Christine Miller of Wilmington, 34, contacted her and told her what she wanted to do, Doyal thought, "I'll never hear from her again."

Then she got a testing kit in the mail.

"I tried not to get too excited or expect anything to come of it just because I have had family members who went through all of the testing and decided not to do it," Doyal said. "I didn't really get too excited until they actually came back and said that the blood tests matched."

Spoiled brat

Miller, a credit analyst, doesn't hesitate when she says she was, at one time, a spoiled brat focused on making money and acquiring things. She'd never had to deal with personal tragedies or watch someone suffering from a serious illness.

"I lived a next-to-perfect life," she said.

Even after she started dating Darren Heisterborg, a Wilmington man who was diagnosed with a serious kidney condition at age 12, Miller thought she could fix the situation. She couldn't understand, she said, why he would be too tired to do things with her sometimes, and she thought he should just snap out of it.

After their relationship ended badly, Miller's campaign to help those suffering from kidney diseases began.

"I started going on Facebook and promoting people that had sick kids and helping people with insurance questions and any problem that anybody had where they needed funds and just didn't know how to get the paperwork done," she said.

As a result of these efforts, Miller found Jennifer Doyal's Facebook page.

"It was the middle of the night, and there was a picture. It was her and her three girls, and my mom has three girls," Miller said. "I opened up the page, and I was just like, 'We are a match and she will have my kidney.'?"

After surgery Feb. 21 at an Atlanta hospital, Doyal did.

Miller and Doyal said they have recovered well, with no complications so far. Without Miller's kidney, Doyal would have had to stay on dialysis for at least another three years to replace the functions of her kidneys, an emotionally and physically draining necessity. But now, "I'm up and going all the time now," Doyal said. "I have a clearer memory and all this energy that I didn't have before."

Eye-openers

In the weeks following the transplant operation, Miller and Heisterborg reconnected, this time as friends.

He jokingly said he thought Miller was crazy, too, when he heard she had donated a kidney.

"But really I thought it was wonderful," he said. "It kind of helped open my eyes."

These days, Heisterborg, like Doyal before her transplant, has to give himself dialysis at home because his body is rejecting the kidney he received from his brother seven years ago.

"I wasn't able to take all my medicines," said Heisterborg, who said he couldn't afford the $1,600-per-month cost of anti-rejection drugs and didn't find any potential assistance with the financial problem until it was too late.

Now he and Miller are working together to help others in similar situations, with the goal of starting a nonprofit organization to raise funds.

"That's what I want to do," Heisterborg said. "Try to help out, especially children."

As for Miller, she credits Doyal and Heisterborg with a personal transformation that led to a change in her priorities.

"At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how much money I make. It doesn't matter what kind of car I drive. It doesn't matter what things I have," Miller said. "What matters is that Jennifer is alright. She's going to be with her family more. She's going to be alive."

Cece Nunn: 343-2310

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