in February<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cThat\u2019s when she got denied there at the very last step, so it just crushed her. And me, too,\u201d Hanson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was absolutely terrible,\u201d Cox\u2019s husband, Matt, said. \u201cI was on my way home from work and she called and gave me the information and it was there driving home. I thought to myself, well, if my kidney is good enough for Jenn, and her kidney\u2019s good enough for Jeff, then why wouldn\u2019t my kidney be good enough for Jeff?\u201d Matt said.<\/p>\n
\u201cJenn called the hospital, got him moved to the first position, and said, send us the kits, the test, the whatever, we\u2019ll do it,\u201d Hanson said.<\/p>\n
Jenn said she checked in with her husband as testing progressed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI appreciate the sentiment of you trying to fix my broken heart and help this through. But at the same time, like, is this what you want to do? And at that point, he was he was all in. I mean, he was like, what are you talking about? Of course I want to do this. Like, if there\u2019s one person we should help in this world, it\u2019s Jeff Hanson,\u201d Jenn said.<\/p>\n
Then on June 10, the day Hanson had been waiting for finally arrived. The gift of life was moved from one hospital room to the next.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe doctor came back and said, this was a boring surgery. And I\u2019m like, what do you mean boring? He was like, everything just went just like it was supposed to,\u201d Hanson said.<\/p>\n
Matt has returned to his job after recovering from the surgery. Hanson is back teaching at Texas Tech.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was able to come back in there and the students were like, we\u2019re so glad to see you,\u201d Hanson said.<\/p>\n
Hanson says his energy has returned and his lab results look better than they ever have.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the amazing thing to me is Matt. I mean, when I talked to Matt, I asked him, you know, about sacrifice, the sacrifice that he made and he insisted it was not a sacrifice, it\u2019s a gift. And, you know, how do I pay you back? And he said, you don\u2019t pay me back for this,\u201d Hanson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, I mean, there\u2019s not a price to be put on it. And we talked about how do you repay that? And really, it\u2019s just you continue to do what you have been doing for me. It\u2019s like, you continue to have that positive impact. You continue to be a pillar in your community and do the things that you have been,\u201d Matt said.<\/p>\n
A year ago, Matt said he did not know his blood type. He is now dedicating part of his time to advocating for organ donation.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy us doing this, it helps out another family or another human in the same manner. I\u2019m all for it. We will do it every day if we have to,\u201d Matt said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s the most generous person I know,\u201d Hanson said.<\/p>\n
More than 11,000 Texans are waiting for life-saving transplants. Register to become an organ, eye or tissue donor today at DonateLifeTexas.org<\/a>.<\/p>\nCopyright 2026 KCBD. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) – A Texas Tech mechanical engineering professor is back in the classroom, after receiving a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412582,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[7990,99852,12147,94277,11349,143976,11394,36212,102173,64398,143978,25631,241,121368,17748,168,170,169,143977,143975,1929,143973,143974,977,1049,302,27,7205,512],"class_list":["post-412937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lubbock","tag-brittany-crittenden","tag-button","tag-donate","tag-donates","tag-donation","tag-engineer","tag-engineering","tag-former","tag-husband","tag-jeff-hanson","tag-jenn-cox","tag-kidney","tag-life","tag-lifegift","tag-living","tag-lubbock","tag-lubbock-headlines","tag-lubbock-news","tag-matt-cox","tag-mechanical","tag-professor","tag-pushes","tag-reset","tag-student","tag-students","tag-tech","tag-texas","tag-transplant","tag-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412937","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=412937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}