Three North Texas Teachers Donate 3 Kidneys in 3 Days

Most people spent time with their families over the recent holiday break. But in North Texas, three teachers had three surgeries to give up their kidneys.

What a sweet Christmas story! All of them took place at Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital in Fort Worth over three days, beginning on December 20. Kathy Knowles (on the left) and Louise Bailey Health in Texas. On the left are Kathy Knowles and Louise Bailey.

The first teacher to have surgery was Louise Bailey. She is no longer working, but she still helps with art at Northwest Independent School District's J.C. Thompson Elementary. Something that happened to her in college made her make this choice.

Teachers Donate 3 KidneysPhoto byfwtx

In 2020, Bailey moved back to the North Texas area and met up with Kathy Knowles, who had been her college roommate and was now a retired Keller school principal. Knowles was on dialysis for stage 4 kidney disease.

I had to say, "Would you consider becoming an organ donor?" as part of the driver's test. What the man says. "I tell myself, 'Why don't I do it now?'" "I feel fine."" After the test, she called Knowles right away and asked, "Do you want a kidney?" Knowles asked, "Do you have an extra one somewhere?" Bailey says she wasn't scared of surgery and doesn't feel bad about picking it.

A press release from him says, "I really felt God's hands in all of this." Because I know how hard things have been for her, I did the right thing. I hope this will make her life better. You think this is brave? The next day, Ava Nickerson, a science teacher at Valley View High School north of Denton, gave a stranger a kidney.

Nickerson didn't do this for personal reasons, that much is clear. The person who took her kidney might not even be known to her. Because her son gave one of his kidneys to a stranger earlier this year without expecting anything in return, she did this nice thing.

The teacher, Nickerson, said, "I teach anatomy and am always amazed by how our bodies are made." She said, "I know that my body can work with just one kidney, even though I have two." It's not fun to have kidneys that don't work right, so I pray that the person who gets the kidneys will have a much better life.

Mike Trevino, a special education teacher and coach at Highland Park Middle School, gave Mason Williams a kidney twenty-four hours after the surgery was over. They met at Polytechnic High School in Fort Worth, where they were both teachers.