My Kidney Transplant Story: Wilson Du
All my adult life, I was in finance. In the early 2000s, there was a real boom in the market, so I made a lot of money as a young adult—probably more than any young adult should make. With all that money comes a lot of irresponsibility.
In many cases, when someone is doing well in one part of their life, other parts suffer. That was true with me. My very last priority in my life was my health. I didn’t care to exercise or eat right, I smoked cigarettes, and I ate out 99% of the time. I was well over 300 pounds and had been all my adult life. I always attributed that to my genetics. I didn’t think I ate that much or ate that badly, I just accepted that was who I was and didn’t do anything about it.
That all changed in June of 2016. A couple years prior, I had started getting gout. I didn’t care to go to the doctor, I just treated the symptoms. One day, I had it badly in both my ankles and knees and I couldn’t get out of bed. I called 911, and they came and busted down the door and took me to the hospital.
I thought I would get a cortisone shot or two. I had never wanted to go to the doctor for it because I knew they would tell me to stop smoking and start eating healthy and exercising. Well, at the hospital, they did say that, but they also said I had Stage 5 renal failure and my blood pressure was ridiculously high. I wanted to go home, but they would not let me leave. They said, if you walk out with this blood pressure, we don’t know if you’ll make it back.
The next day, the nephrologist came to explain to me what kidney failure was. I was still in denial. I said, OK, give me the pills or do the surgery and let me get back to work. He explained about dialysis and that the only way out of it was a kidney transplant. However, he told me I was significantly overweight and that I would need to lose about 100 pounds before I would be eligible for a transplant. Well, that was like telling me to lose 1,000 pounds. I had gone on various diets before and lost 50 or 60 pounds, but then as soon as I went off the diet, it would come back. That had been the pattern throughout my life. This time, the doctor said I had to lose it and keep it off.
He told me I was significantly overweight and that I would need to lose about 100 pounds before I would be eligible for a transplant. Well, that was like telling me to lose 1,000 pounds.
Wilson Du
After they got my blood pressure under control, my body started deteriorating more and more. I started to feel weak, my skin started to change color. My doctor told me that it wasn’t a matter of if I was going to have to go on dialysis, it was a matter of when. They wanted to put a fistula in my arm for the dialysis but I refused. Finally, after a couple of months of deteriorating, he finally convinced me to put one in “just in case.”
As I was healing from that surgery, my body started swelling. My kidneys had completely failed, but I was still in denial; I thought it would all be OK. Over a couple of weeks, I just kept on inflating. My legs looked like elephant legs; my face, my arms, everything was swollen. One morning, after I had been swelling for a couple weeks, my mom came in (I had moved back home with my parents) and told me I had to check on my dad. I went down to check on him and he was stroking out. We didn’t want to wait for an ambulance so we drove him to the ER.
After I got back home, I got up to use the bathroom and I collapsed. I tried to get up multiple times and kept collapsing. I called 911. The Fire Department came and got me and took me to the same ER where I had dropped my dad a couple hours ago. Later that night, I swelled up even more, to the point where I was having trouble breathing. They took me to the OR to put a catheter in my chest (I had waited too long to get the fistula in my arm and it wasn’t healed enough to be usable) and I started dialysis right away.
I stayed in the hospital for a few weeks, then another few weeks in a nursing home. In the meantime, my dad had been discharged and more of my family were coming to visit me. They were coming from far away because word had spread that I might not make it. By then, I was maybe 370 pounds. The doctors estimated that I had gained about 60–70 pounds due to the swelling, which had caused my back to go out—that’s why I collapsed.
After the nursing home, I had gained enough strength to lift myself out of the wheelchair, but I still couldn’t walk. The ambulance would come to take me for dialysis and when they brought me back home they asked if I wanted to be in the wheelchair or in the bed, because wherever they put me, that’s where I was going to stay. At that point, my mom was cooking for me and she was following the doctor’s orders and making everything healthy—no salt, no oil, nothing bad. I was so frustrated, I felt like everything had been taken away from me.
I said to myself, I have to do something. There is no purpose to life right now, I am just waiting to die… I gave it some thought, but something in the back of my mind kept saying: Fight this thing. Choose life.
Wilson Du
A defining moment for me was one time after dialysis. I said to myself, I have to do something. There is no purpose to life right now, I am just waiting to die. I actually considered just stopping dialysis. I read that the average survival rate without dialysis was 3–5 years, and I knew I was so unhealthy that I would be on the low end of that range. I gave it some thought, but something in the back of my mind kept saying: Fight this thing. Choose life.
Over the next 10 to 15 minutes, that mantra—Choose life. Choose life.—just drowned out all the thoughts of giving up. So I thought to myself, If you are going to fight this, you are going to give it hell. I forced myself to get up and I walked from the wheelchair to the door. That first step was the most painful thing I had ever felt in my life. The second step was even more painful. But it was only physical pain. In that moment, I didn’t think about my emotional pain or my family’s pain. For the first time, I felt like I was out of prison. So I kept it up, every day. That 10–15 feet became to the sidewalk, then to the street, then to the stores. My first mile took me an hour with my mom behind me with the wheelchair in case I needed it. I kept on doing more and more.
I decided to choose life, and the terms are: I keep on going. The most I walked was 19–20 miles. It took me all day: walk, rest, come home, eat, rest, then walk more. Pretty soon those walks were not enough, so I started running a little bit. Then I started running races: 5Ks, 10Ks. Then I hopped on a bike. Then I rode my bike almost 600 miles from Northern California to Southern California. It took me 13 days and it was one of the greatest feelings ever.
The following year I did a triathlon. I was just trying to finish. There were over 400 people in my category and I came in number 378, and 30 or 40 of those people probably didn’t even show up, so I was one of the last people to finish. I was doing all this while still on dialysis. As the weight started coming off, I started to feel a responsibility to talk to other patients.
In the nursing home, I was desperately seeking a person on dialysis who was trying to lose weight. All I could find were people post-transplant—there was nothing for people on dialysis. I was searching for that person. Now I am that person. I wasn’t able to find someone when I needed help, but now people who need help can find me. There is nothing remarkable about me, I just never stopped. The whole philosophy is to just keep moving. It doesn’t matter how fast, just keep going.
Where I am in Northern California, a lot of the people on dialysis can’t afford a gym membership, so I just told people to come on in, no charge, we’ll just walk together.
Wilson Du
I wanted to create a space for that, and the universe had a funny way of making it happen. The owner of my gym wanted to sell it. I didn’t know anything about the gym business but I ended up taking over the space and opening my own gym. Where I am in Northern California, a lot of the people on dialysis can’t afford a gym membership, so I just told people to come on in, no charge, we’ll just walk together. All I wanted to do was take care of these patients. All it’s about for patients is building confidence. Once they build confidence, the sky’s the limit.
Somewhere along the line, the gym created its own ecosystem. We didn’t charge dialysis patients, but other people started coming to us wanting to pay for gym memberships because they loved our cause. We’re in our fifth year and we’ve grown tremendously. The Warrior class has grown so much—we have patients from all over the world. We have 120–130 paying members who help support the program. I personally train people with urgent need, who have to lose weight to become eligible for a transplant.
In the meantime, I had been giving speeches about my experience for the National Kidney Foundation. Amy Hewitt, who had just joined the NKF, heard me speak. She called me and said she wanted to be my kidney donor. Now, she comes in to my gym and trains. She’s my superhero, I love her to death. Back in the nursing home, all I had was my prayers. I promised God that if he got me out of this, I would live a life of service. Here I am today, the strongest I have ever been physically, mentally, and emotionally. God delivered on his promise to me, and now I am delivering on my promise to him. When people come to me, I tell them: I am just like you. I don’t have any secrets, all it takes is hard work. The most fulfilling and rewarding thing in my life is to see these patients get better, to help them have some control over their lives. That was the hope I was looking for, and now I am trying to bring that hope to the whole world.