Harvest my kidney, says Picadilly farmer to friend who needs transplant

Stewart King needed a lot more than an extra farmhand this season. He needed a new kidney, and now he has one — thanks to a fellow farmer.

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The 52-year-old Portugal Cove-St. Philip's man is the fifth generation in his family to suffer from polycystic kidney disease.

It's a disease that affected King's livelihood and forced him to sell off his all of his livestock in the last few years. 

"I was really struggling," he said.

"Years ago, I didn't mind the work, I could fly through it. After I was affected with this disease, work just became too hard and I had to slow down."

Dialysis was an option, one that King had started, but he said the ultimate cure is a new kidney.

'Lifeline to a drowning man'

That's when his buddy Nathan Dennis stepped in.  

Dennis is a 28-year-old farmer from Picadilly on Newfoundland's west coast, and offered to help in ways that no farmhand ever could. 

He called King's wife, Daphne, and asked what she thought of the idea of a kidney donation. 

"It's like throwing a lifeline to a drowning man," Dennis said she told him. 

It's one thing to offer up a kidney, it's another to see if it would actually be a match. 

"I guess the odds were in our favour in this particular case," Dennis told CBC  Radio's On The Go.

Multiple tests later, the two were matched and the pair then travelled to Nova Scotia for the transplant. 

The surgery was a success with the doctor telling King he had been given a "beautiful kidney." 

"Arteries and veins the same size as mine," King said.

"It worked like a dream ... [it] started working on the operating table."

With the new organ doing its work, King got back to doing his.

"I do feel 20 years younger," he said. 

"Unbelievable the difference a good kidney makes to a person."

Two friends who share a passion for agriculture now share something a lot more personal. 

"I often torment him," Dennis said with a laugh.

"Who is actually our other half? Is it my girlfriend or his wife — or are we each other's other half now?"