In sickness and in health: Wife donates kidney to help ailing husband

Aug. 10--DECATUR -- Malcolm Beasley will never forget the moment his wife, Iris Lewis-Beasley, told him she was planning on giving him one of her kidneys.

Both of the 39-year-old Beasley's kidneys were failing and he needed a transplant. He was on dialysis three days a week for four hours a day to keep him alive.

The Beasleys had been told by Springfield Memorial Medical Center's Transplant Services team that a kidney from a blood relative would work best. Malcolm's family put out text and Facebook blasts asking relatives to be tested as possible donors, but donating a kidney isn't an easy life decision.

"It's a burden -- both giving up a kidney and financially because you it's a lot of time not working," Iris said. "I honestly wasn't too optimistic."

That's when Iris called Memorial and asked them to test her. It turned out their blood types were a match. At that point, Iris told Malcolm she was donating her kidney to him.

"I was just like, 'Wow, sweetie, you don't have to do this,'" Malcolm said.

But Iris pushed forward. Two more tests had to be done, tissue typing and serum cross-match.

"I wasn't a perfect match, but close enough that they were willing to proceed," Iris said.

On July 26, Malcolm and Iris entered Memorial Medical Center with tears streaming down their faces and the faces of their children.

"It's emotional. I'm crying just thinking about it," Iris said the day before the surgery. "There are certain things you don't have control over.

"We're optimistic. When you look at their success rate with this surgery, the odds are in our favor. But there can be complications with surgery. We can only pray everything works out like it should."

Two weeks after surgery, it's working. Malcolm, with one of Iris' kidneys now in his body, actually left the hospital before Iris, who had a minor complication. But both are home now and recovering.

"His body is accepting the kidney," Iris said. "He has to take medicine that lowers his immune system so it doesn't attack his kidney and cause his body to reject it, but his creatinine levels, blood pressure and urine output are normal and falling into place. He's doing exceptionally well."

Malcolm and Iris were high school sweethearts. They began dating during their sophomore year in 1993. Iris got pregnant and had a baby while still in high school, but Caylin died at three months old.

Still, Malcolm and Iris stuck together.

"We've been through a lot. We're like Bonnie and Clyde," Malcolm said, laughing. "We got in trouble together and did everything together. 'Malcolm and Iris.' It's like it's one word now."

Malcolm and Iris have three children -- Ilaina, 19, Malcolm Jr., 15, and Ilyjah, 2. Life was good in Oct. 2015 when Malcolm told Iris he was having trouble with his vision.

"It was later in the week, and he told me, 'Babe, I need some new glasses,' and said he was going to make an appointment soon," Iris said. "But then that weekend it kept getting worse and worse, and on Monday he called me from work and said it was so bad he couldn't even see the numbers on his cellphone."

Iris took Malcolm to Central Illinois Vision Center in Decatur, where bleeding and swelling was found in Malcolm's retina. His blood pressure was 270-over-163, so Malcolm was immediately taken to the emergency room. Once admitted, he was put in the intensive care unit.

"They checked him and found that his kidneys had failed and he was put on dialysis," Iris said.

Malcolm was diagnosed with IgA nephropathy, also known as Berger's disease, which is a kidney disease caused when an antibody called immunoglobulin A (IgA) gets stuck in kidneys, causing inflammation that keeps kidneys from being able to filter blood.

"He'd had it for years and had no idea what was going on," Iris said. "He was absolutely healthy. He worked out at the YMCA all the time. But the damage to his kidneys was advanced. He had less than 9 percent function."

The process that led to Iris donating her kidney to Malcolm didn't exactly go smoothly. First, the hospital had to agree to do the surgery. An ethics committee met and said it was comfortable with the procedure. Then Malcolm and Iris had to decide if it was the right thing to do as parents.

"I'm a perfectly healthy person opting for an elective surgery. I never had any reservations, but there are a lot of I's to dot and T's to cross," Iris said. "We had to consider genetics. Is this something that could be passed on to the kids? Because then I wouldn't have one I could donate to them.

"And we also had to consider the danger of having two parents on an operating table. What if something happened to one or both of us? We had to consider it, and we had to have things lined up just in case."

Just to give Malcolm the kidney, Iris had to undergo surgery to have a mass removed from her bladder that turned out to be harmless.

Then, just days before the surgery, Malcolm was let go as facility support manager for at a bank, which left him without insurance.

"He didn't have anymore FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act) time," Iris said. "They said they have the intention to hire him back when he recovers, but it left him without any coverage."

Iris was able to get Malcolm on her insurance through her employer, Accutech Systems out of Muncie, Ind., but the deductible is high.

To help with expenses, Iris started a gofundme account: gofundme.com/beasleytransplant. The site has a picture of the Beasley family with a short description of their plight and updates post-surgery. So far, the site has raised $2,295.

"I was a little upset about it at first. It hurt my pride," Malcolm said. "But I had to put my pride aside. And to see that people have donated, I'm forever in debt to them."

Malcolm and Iris have had to get comfortable with accepting help. Two nights before the surgery, several neighbors, including some they had never met, stopped by the Beasleys' home to wish them luck and offer help. Their daughter, Ilaina, a criminal justice major at Ball State University, has taken time off from school to help. Iris' sister Tracy came from Tampa Bay, Fla., for the surgery.

"(Ilaina) has been carrying the brunt, but my older kids are very self-sufficient," Iris said. "Having a 2-year-old makes things more complicated. But we have a great support system.

"This journey has had its challenges, but waiting time for organs is three to five years at best, so it was worth it to get to this point."

There are still challenges ahead. The body can reject new organs for the first several months, but Malcolm is happy to be alive and never forgets who he has to thank for that.

"Every time someone hears our story, they cry.They think my wife is an angel, and she is," Malcolm said. "Not too many people are trying to give you one of their kidneys.

"When you get married, they say, 'In sickness and in health.' She went to bat for me. She's amazing. But that's just the type of person she is. She's always there for me and my kids."

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