Facing kidney failure and an uncommon blood type, Ishmael Thorns didn’t know what would happen when he turned to TikTok for help finding a kidney donor.<\/p>\n
“I don’t ever do this \u2013 I don’t ask to go viral, but make this go viral \u2013 share this post, man. I need a kidney, man.”<\/p>\n
Thorns continued posting videos, believing the right person would eventually see them.<\/p>\n
“My kidney donor is out there somewhere man, help link me up.”<\/p>\n
One of those videos appeared on the TikTok feed of Brandy Laman, a pharmacist who lives near Houston.<\/p>\n
“He just popped up on my page,” Laman said.<\/p>\n
She sent Thorns a message offering to donate one of her kidneys.<\/p>\n
“She’s my hero \u2013 my angel \u2013 sent straight from God to bless me with a new chance at life,” Thorns said.<\/p>\n
A few months after that first TikTok message, the two strangers arrived at Methodist Dallas for transplant surgery. They met face-to-face only hours before the operation.<\/p>\n
For Laman, donating her kidney was an opportunity to change someone’s life.<\/p>\n
“I just really saw an opportunity to help somebody in a life-changing way,” Laman said.<\/p>\n
Her decision was also deeply personal. A few years earlier, her husband was diagnosed with leukemia, and a bone marrow transplant from a stranger in Germany saved his life. Laman said donating her kidney gave her the chance to provide that same gift to someone else.<\/p>\n
“I was just honored to do it \u2013 honored that I got this opportunity \u2013 that I came across him \u2013 it’s been just as much a blessing to me to be able to do this,” Laman said.<\/p>\n
Dr. Christie Gooden, a transplant surgeon at Methodist Dallas, said stories like theirs are what inspired her to pursue transplant medicine.<\/p>\n
“This is one of the reasons I went into transplant because of stories like this because there’s so much more we have in common than we don’t,” Gooden said.<\/p>\n
Two weeks after surgery, Thorns was recovering well and said he plans to keep using TikTok to encourage more people to become living kidney donors.<\/p>\n
“My plan is to advocate for my fellow kidney warriors \u2013 people with kidney disease \u2013,” Thorns said.<\/p>\n
“I want to be there for my sons and fully appreciate this gift that I’ve been given,” Thorns said.<\/p>\n
This story was originally reported for broadcast by NBC DFW. AI tools helped convert the story into a digital article, and an NBC DFW journalist edited it again before publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Facing kidney failure and an uncommon blood type, Ishmael Thorns didn’t know what would happen when he turned…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":385978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1302,102,104,103],"class_list":["post-385977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-cedar-hill","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/385978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}