Special relationship

When the offer for a kidney came from a former student last spring, Dr. Bill George candidly wondered if he’d given the student a good grade.

He needn’t have worried.

Phil Hoover, 47, a mid-1980s student in the then-Lee College professor’s Introduction to Missions class, didn’t remember the grade he received and said it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

“I feel like it was the hand of God,” he said of the late October transplant that freed his former teacher from three-day-a-week dialysis. “Some call it coincidence, some call it a miracle. God knew how to orchestrate this.”

Dr. George, 68, now coordinator of education for the Church of God World Missions Department, had kidney failure in August 2007 after more than 30 years of diabetes and high blood pressure.

Although he began dialysis immediately, he also signed up for a kidney donation at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Medical Center, a leading center for such transplants.

The waiting for a cadaver kidney alone was five to seven years, Dr. George said.

Last spring, Dr. Fred Garmon, also a former student, offered his kidney but soon learned his high blood pressure would prevent it. But his placement of the teacher’s need on a Facebook site attracted Mr. Hoover.

The week before Easter, on only his second day on Facebook — “I was very resistant to getting on (but) now I’m addicted and hooked” — the Chicago resident saw the page, “Find a Kidney for Bill George,” on the social networking site.

“I was praying that somewhere in this big family, you’ve got to have a kidney for this man,” Mr. Hoover said. “The Lord spoke to me. He said, ‘You are a match.’ I said in my heart, ‘Yes, I will do it.’ I never considered it wouldn’t work out.”

It did, but it took awhile.

After blood tests confirmed Mr. Hoover as a suitable donor, two issues delayed the transplant.

The first problem was a blood strain he had from a previous disease. That was resolved by injections over three weeks. The second was his glucose tolerance test, which was a point out of range. It was suggested he lose 10 pounds.

“I exercised on the treadmill,” Mr. Hoover said. “I was careful with what I ate. The results (eight weeks later) came back perfect.”

The transplant surgery occurred at UAB’s Renal Transplant Center on Oct. 28.

“It’s been one miracle after other,” said Mr. Hoover of his laparoscopic kidney removal. “I was up walking the same day, five hours after surgery.”

He has been back at work as an admission officer at Coyne American Institute in Chicago for several weeks.

Dr. George, who was scheduled to be released from care of the UAB Medical Center on Friday, is also doing well.

“I have been told I might expect the donor kidney to last for 20 years or more if I faithfully follow the medical regimen that has me taking anti-rejection medicines the rest of my life,” he said. “I certainly plan to do that.”

The 50-year minister with the Church of God, who has served as pastor, teacher, evangelist, educator and editor for the denomination, said he recalled his donor as “a bright student, outgoing. He is a caring person, as the donation affirms.”

Mr. Hoover, it turns out, was the third former student to offer a kidney to Dr. George. The first two were eliminated for medical reasons. Five additional male students and a female friend of his wife’s followed Mr. Hoover’s offer but weren’t needed.

“I was overwhelmed at the thought that several former students would go to this extent for me,” said Dr. George. “It is a humbling experience. Even more touching were the messages that accompanied their offer. I would never have thought I had the affect on their lives that they wrote about.”

Mr. Hoover, a Huntsville, Ala., native and 10-year Air Force veteran, said he is doing “wonderfully well” and his “bodily functions are perfectly normal.”

“It has been one of the most amazing things I’ve ever done in my entire life,” he said.