‘Predestined’: A lifelong bond becomes a lifesaving kidney gift
April 27, 2026
RayMond Hamilton and Sheila Campbell have known each other since they were kids growing up in Fort Worth. Their families attended Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church, co-founded by RayMond’s grandparents.
The two friends graduated from Trimble Tech High School a year apart in the early 1980s, then built their lives and careers in North Texas, never straying too far away from each other. Enduring friendships, family connections, and a community rooted in faith helped them maintain strong ties.
“Somewhere and everywhere, we were always around,” RayMond said.
And that’s a good thing: Decades after they first met, Sheila would be there for RayMond in the most meaningful way – donating one of her kidneys to save his life following his two-plus-year ordeal with chronic kidney disease. Their transplant procedures took place Feb. 16, 2026, at UT Southwestern’s William P. Clements Jr. University Hospital.
“My kidney was predestined to be his,” Sheila said. “It’s just divine intervention because God knew this might happen. All along, he never let us lose connection.”
Unexpected kidney failure
With the exception of a broken leg as a high school quarterback, RayMond said he was always pretty healthy. But in 2023, he began experiencing chronic fatigue, dramatic weight loss (almost 80 pounds), and odd drainage around his ears that turned out to be lymph nodes excreting waste and toxins.
In early January 2024, RayMond was stunned to be diagnosed with kidney failure. During an emergency hospitalization, his kidney function had plummeted to a dangerously low 8%.
“All I recall is waking up the next morning with a port in my chest and being told I had started dialysis,” said RayMond, 61.
Four months later, at the recommendation of his sister QueTrenia Hogans, who works as an operations manager for UT Southwestern’s Health System, RayMond began his treatment journey at UTSW.
Tests revealed RayMond had a genetic condition called APOL1 (heterozygous). About 13% of African Americans carry two risk variants for APOL1, putting them at much higher risk for kidney disease.
Doctors determined RayMond needed a new left kidney, and he began the transplant screening process. Complicating his situation, scans also showed a mass on his other kidney. In late July 2024, Jennifer Tse, M.D., Assistant Professor of Urology, began monitoring that growth at UTSW’s Monty and Tex Moncrief Medical Center at Fort Worth.
Tentative plans were made for surgery to remove the right kidney at the same time RayMond would receive a donor left kidney. Without a transplant, doctors told RayMond, he likely would live only another five to seven years. So, in September 2024, he went on the kidney transplant waitlist at UTSW.
“Their thinking was push, push, push for a living donor because of the chances of a better long-term outcome,” RayMond said. “The possibility of a deceased-donor organ also came up because that’s the more common route in the African American community.”
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Minority Health, Black Americans made up 13% of all organ donors in the U.S. in 2025. In 2024, only 17% of Black organ donors were living, compared with 29% of all donors.
Even during two years of dialysis – three sessions a week for three to four hours each – RayMond never lost faith that he would find a kidney donor.
“My mindset was, ‘I’m just doing overtime,’” he said.
Who would the donor be?
In November 2024, when RayMond and his wife, Karen, missed the annual holiday kickoff party hosted by Sheila and her husband, David, Sheila became worried.
The couples were close: RayMond, David, and David’s brother have been friends for years, as have David’s sister and RayMond’s sister, QueTrenia, or “Q.”
Sheila called to find out whether anything was wrong, and that’s when she learned of RayMond’s health struggles and dire need for a kidney. She quickly helped spread the word.
“I said, OK, I’m going to send the donor information out to my family and friends, too,” said Sheila, 62. “But I can’t send it out if I’m not going to be on the list. So, I registered as a volunteer.”
At the same time, Sheila and David were dealing with his own health challenge. Sheila believes it was part of God’s larger plan that her name didn’t come up to be screened as a donor for RayMond until her husband’s case had been resolved.
As she filled out her donor registration, Sheila recalled, her husband asked what had made her decide to take the leap and volunteer to donate a kidney to her friend.
Sheila never hesitated about the ultimate motivation.
“I said, ‘Well, it’s a God thing.’ And David said, ‘I’m in, and I support you.’”
On Feb. 20, 2025, after Sheila went through the initial donor screening process, she called the Hamiltons with good news: She was a match for RayMond.
In many ways, it made perfect sense. The two lifelong friends could now be linked permanently.
Still, Sheila knew RayMond had been on the transplant waitlist for a while, and he would have to continue on dialysis while she completed donor testing at UTSW – a multistage assessment to ensure the donor’s long-term health and compatibility with the recipient. It involves comprehensive blood/urine tests, imaging (CT/MRI), and evaluations by specialists (surgeons, nephrologists, and social workers) to ensure the donor is physically and mentally healthy.
So, she asked her cherished friend: If a deceased-donor organ became available sooner, would he rather take that option?
“His answer was a quick and definitive ‘no,’” Sheila said. “And I was surprised. I was like, ‘OK, God. I’m really in this because he’s not going to take any other kidney than mine.’”
She met with her UTSW transplant coordinator, learned all about the process, and asked to be connected with others who had already gone through the life-changing experience.
“I talked to donors, recipients, caregivers, couples, praying all along,” Sheila said. “I wanted to know the whole side of it.”
When RayMond’s doctors began to suspect the mass on his right kidney was cancerous, they decided that, rather than waiting to perform the double procedure, it would be best to remove that kidney first. Dr. Tse performed a nephrectomy at Clements University Hospital, and the pathology report confirmed renal cell cancer. Fortunately, no cancerous cells had spread outside the kidney, but now he was living with one chronically diseased kidney.
Transplant day couldn’t arrive soon enough.
‘Everything is brand-new’
Early on a Monday in February 2026 – the same month UT Southwestern completed its 2,000th kidney transplant – steadfast friends RayMond and Sheila got ready for their dueling surgeries at Clements University Hospital, surrounded by their close-knit families and supported by a vast network of prayer warriors back home in Fort Worth and Waxahachie.
The procedures couldn’t have gone more smoothly.
“I never felt a thing, before or after,” said RayMond, who was able to go home two days after surgery. “Even when they took the staples out later, I didn’t feel that.
"Now, it seems like everything is brand-new. It’s totally changed how I feel – the new energy, in my muscles, my whole body.”
Sheila did so well she was able to go home a day earlier.
Jigesh Shah, D.O., Surgical Director of the Kidney Transplantation Program at UTSW, removed Sheila’s kidney. Parsia Vagefi, M.D., Division Chief of Surgical Transplantation and Executive Clinical Director of Solid Organ Transplant, transplanted the organ into RayMond.
“Mr. Hamilton underwent a very smooth and successful transplant surgery, which gives him the best chance at a long and healthier life,” said David Wojciechowski, D.O., Medical Director of the Kidney Transplantation Program at UTSW. “The kidney functioned immediately, and he currently has excellent kidney function.”
George Eboh, M.D., transplant nephrologist and Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine at UTSW, who’s part of the team overseeing RayMond’s post-transplant care, said he will need to be on immunosuppression medication the rest of his life and is being monitored for recurrence of renal cell carcinoma, but “his prognosis is very good.”
‘A living angel’
RayMond and Sheila both returned to work April 1 – RayMond as an overnight shift composite operator at Lockheed Martin in Fort Worth and Sheila as an IT project manager for Dallas County. Both say they feel great and are thankful for each other, their caregivers at UT Southwestern, their supportive spouses, God – and not necessarily in that order.
“My experience at UTSW was awesome,” RayMond said. “The staff was super professional, polite, and courteous to my family and me. All my visits to the Fort Worth and Dallas campuses have been unmatched in the care and concern they showed me, making my transplant journey amazingly easy. I can’t thank them enough for being there for me no matter what situation may arise.”
RayMond describes the generosity of his longtime friend by simply saying: “She’s like a living angel.”
But Sheila said the credit doesn’t belong to her.
“God said do it, and I did,” she said. “Would I do it again? Absolutely. There was nothing about the journey, the surgery, the visits that would make me tell anybody, ‘Don’t do it.’ I would tell somebody, ‘God has created our bodies in such a way that if he has called you to give a kidney, somebody’s life depends on it.
“‘So, what are you waiting on?’”
Related: Read “A landmark in transplant care”
Visit UT Southwestern's Living-Donor Kidney Transplant page to learn how you can save a life by becoming a living donor.
