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Everyone in the family was worried and seeking solutions, 30-year-old Alex said.
Doctors found a solution; and that solution was Alex.
He was the perfect match to donate a kidney to his father. Furthermore, out of his two older brothers, Alex was the only one who wasn’t taking medication and was healthy enough to become a donor, Tamayo said.
“At first I was reluctant,” Richard Tamayo said. “I just felt I didn’t want him to be left with one kidney.”
Tamayo said he worried about his son’s future health.
“Both of my parents were hesitant to allow me to donate. That’s just how much they care about me and my brothers,” Alex said.
But he had no doubts. “The second I found out, I knew I wanted to try and give him one of my kidneys,” he said.
So he insisted, and in doing so Alex decided to write a letter to his father.
“I put a lot of honesty and love into the letter, which helped reassure my parents that it was something I truly wanted to do. One thing I remember telling him was that I’d rather die knowing I tried, than live knowing I didn’t,” Alex said.
After six months of physical and psychological preparation (donors are mentally evaluated before a transplant) the operation took place July 27, recalled Tamayo while noting that “ironically, this was my wife’s birthday.”
The operation was a success.
“You really don’t know how bad you feel until you feel good again,” Richard Tamayo, who now has to take anti-rejection medication for the rest of his life as well as having occasional doctor check-ups, said.
But taking medication doesn’t seem to bother him.
Doctors said, Richard Tamayo explained, “I was going to feel better than I had in 20 years, and I believe it’s true.”
And although they were always close, this ordeal seems to have taken this father-and-son relationship to another level.
“I think it’s definitely brought us closer,” Alex Tamayo said. “I think there is a new unspoken bond that my father and I have.”
Richard Tamayo agreed and added that what Alex did “is incredible. I will never stop appreciating everything he did for me.”
When asked about Father’s Day, both said they were going to celebrate as they always do — together in family. But for both, this Father’s Day is special.
“Last year I didn’t feel like celebrating too much,” Richard Tamayo said, “but now I’m alive again.”
And for Alex, whose wife is expecting his first child, the festivity “has been redefined.”
Staff Writer Alejandro Davila can be reached at 760-337-3445 or
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Brian Stewart had been on a brutal dialysis regimen for a year in 2010 when his daughter, Stephanie, offered to give him one of her own kidneys. (DARREN MAKOWICHUK/QMI Agency)
