As a high schooler, Jereme Peterson probably had no idea his future would hold a series of agonizing dialysis sessions, extreme weight loss and waiting on the brink of death for a kidney donor.
However, he didn’t know that 25 years later, it would be one of his classmates that came to his rescue.
The 42-year-old federal corrections officer tells KHOU that after three years of 10-hour daily dialysis treatments, his health was not improving. When he asked his doctors what would happen if he stopped his appointments, he told reporters the doctors replied, “You got two months to live. Get your affairs in order.”
Peterson said he had no choice but to seek his only option left: join the lengthy waiting list for a kidney transplant. According to the American Kidney Fund, most Americans wait three to five years for a donor. Peterson said he wasn’t sure how much time he had left. At the time he weighed 315 pounds and his kidney function had declined to two percent.
In desperation, Peterson said he took to social media pleading for help in locating a donor. Unbeknownst to him, the post happened to come upon the algorithm of a person he hadn’t seen in over two decades, a white woman named Angelina Attaway.
Attaway told KHOU she recognized Peterson as her high school classmate from Blountstown, Fla. She said she anonymously contacted Medical City Dallas with her interest in donating her kidney and made her arrangements for the procedure. By complete coincidence, or what some would call divine timing, she ran into Peterson the day before the surgery in the hospital lobby.
“I’m like, ‘What are you in Dallas for?” said Peterson to KHOU. Attaway said she told him she had his kidney.
“Time just stopped and then when she told me she was my donor, time really stopped,” Peterson told reporters.
Dr. Tiffany Anthony conducted procedure which she said went smoothly, especially because Peterson was able to locate a living donor, per KHOU’s report. The other reason, of course, is the fact we don’t see many white people donating organs to Black people. A 2022 report from The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine found Black people are three times more likely to suffer from kidney failure, wait longer for donors and are even less likely to receive transplants.
Given the documented disparities, Peterson’s story gives hope. The report said he is responding well to his new organ and Attaway checks in on him from time to time. Now, the two aren’t just reconnected by social media. They share a part of each other.
“It’s like we’ve become family in a way. We share a body part, you know, so, we always say, ‘How’s our kidney doing?’” said Attaway via KHOU.