Susan Ellis and Tia Wimbush work in Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta’s IT department. They both learned in the fall of 2019 that their husbands went into renal failure just days apart. Both husbands needed kidney transplants. Susan found out she was not a match for her husband, so she joined a donor chain in the hopes that he would eventually get a kidney. Unfortunately, the donor chain fell through.
In 2020, Ellis and Wimbush ran into each other again in the bathroom and got to talking about the donor process. They each realized they were donor matches for each other’s husbands. Fast forward to March 2021, Wimbush donated a kidney to Ellis’ husband Lance and Ellis donated a kidney to Wimbush’s husband Rodney.
Wimbush told WSB-TV Atlanta, “You could be someone else’s hope. All it takes is a conversation, a kind word, checking in on someone to see how they are doing. You don’t know how far that can go for one person.”
