He once had hope to spare

[okarol]

He once had hope to spare

Rick Wilson gave a kidney to a total stranger, but now he wonders about his own fate and whether anyone cares

Saturday, March 03, 2007
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES
The Oregonian

The dingy little travel trailer sags on its concrete slab among the rows of recreational has-beens in the Salem RV Park. Rick Wilson opens the door to his world, his head lowered atop his gaunt 6-foot frame so that he won't brush the ceiling. He sweeps his arm in welcome.

Make yourself at home, Wilson sighs, as he slumps onto a bed covered in a faded zebra-print comforter. In the cramped space, his left knee brushes his stove. His right foot rests just inches from the closet door.

"At one time, I was kind of famous," Wilson says. "Now I'm barely alive, and no one knows who I am."
 
The man who once made national news by giving a kidney away to a stranger he met on a California pier is 53. He's been stubbornly independent, incredibly generous and incomprehensibly impulsive. He's hobnobbed with TV stars and well-known rock musicians.

Now his world has shrunk to this small trailer, and he's facing the fate he always swore he'd avoid.

Born in the space between two brothers and two sisters, Wilson took his place as the family's free spirit. "Each family has one," younger brother Will says from his home in Florida.

In high school, Rick Wilson excelled as a pole vaulter and musician. But school didn't hold his interest much. So he dropped out and traveled the country playing drums. He says he jammed with rock and country musicians such as Freddy Fender and Johnny Paycheck.

The trailer with the ratty, but immaculately clean, brown carpet has little space for knickknacks. But Wilson still makes room for artifacts of a time when he mattered.

A stack of signed glossies from rock stars. Faded and tattered master scuba diver certification cards. Receipts for the plaque that went on a large rock memorial to Jacques Cousteau that Wilson dropped into the ocean near Catalina Island. The spray-painted chunk of concrete that's tucked into a crevice behind Wilson's double bed. It's from the Berlin Wall, Wilson says, reaching into that same nook to produce a photo of him and a friend at the scene.

And the Montel Williams tape, stacked on the plywood shelf that holds a 13-inch TV and old VCR above his bed.

The tape dates to 1991, a year after Wilson met a diabetic stranger who needed a kidney transplant. After four hours of fishing and talking on the Hermosa Beach Pier, Wilson decided to give the man a part of himself. "It's the thing I was put on this Earth to do," Wilson says.

"Nothing is beyond his realm of compassion," Will Wilson says. "If he was able to do something for someone, he would, even if it was giving from his own body."

Talk-show celebrity

When the media got news that Wilson, a white man, had decided to donate his kidney to a black man he'd just met, Wilson suddenly found himself telling his tale not only to Montel Williams, but also Oprah, Maury, "Inside Edition" and NBC's "Today" show. When passers-by saw him on the street, they recognized his face and patted him on the back.

"I can show you the tapes; so you know it's true," Wilson says, running his crudely tattooed hand through his graying hair.

He's used to having to prove himself. Visitors look at the man scraping by in a worn-out trailer park and don't believe a word he says about the things he's done. But not that many come by anymore anyway.

Nothing indicates that giving away a kidney made him more vulnerable, but five years ago he learned that he himself had diabetes. Woe swallowed him whole.

It was the final blow in a life that's seen more valleys than peaks. Four marriages that soured and died. Estrangement from his kids. Financial setbacks from an underwater recovery business that never took off because he just couldn't bring himself to charge clients enough.

Now a body once used to swimming along the ocean floor and a jack-of-all-trades who could fix anything that needed fixing is failing.

"I'm being kept alive artificially," Wilson says, holding a syringe in one hand and a bottle of insulin in another. "I'm tired of the shots. They hurt. Every time I give myself a shot I want to cry because it's not the way I want to live."

He tests his blood sugar, and the meter reads 548, more than three times what it should. Wilson winces as he slides the needle into his side, then wipes a tear from his sunken cheek with the back of his hand. If the numbers stay that high, his organs could fail. He could go into a coma. He could die.

He's passed out three times on his part-time maintenance job. Last month, neighbor Linc Bolen found Wilson sitting in a chair in the midst of a diabetic attack.

"What else can I do?" Wilson says shrugging. He tugs at the black belt that's looped through his cheap blue jeans. He once wore it on the first notch. The imprint of the belt buckle has moved to the second, the third and now the fourth.

Brother reaches out

He doesn't have to die, his nurse says. His diabetes can be controlled with diet, exercise and proper doses of insulin. But Wilson doesn't believe that. And he doesn't believe anyone cares. So, he doesn't try.

His brother Will cared enough to hunt Wilson down after being out of touch for years. Will tried to persuade his older brother to accept rent money before the 72-hour eviction notice tacked to his door Thursday expires. To visit the food bank. To abandon his lifelong independence enough to get the help he needs.

"It breaks my heart that he has come to the point in his life where everything has gone wrong, and he sees so many obstacles that he's overwhelmed," Will says, his voice cracking. "He's lost hope. I want to show him there's light at the end of the tunnel."

But the light is too dim for Wilson's eyes. Ringing in his ears is his mother's voice, telling his alcoholic father that he would die a lonely old man. That was the fate Rick Wilson always feared for himself.

His dad did die alone. Now Wilson is resigned to doing the same.

"I just sit here," he says, resting his head on his hand, "and survive until I don't."

Nikole Hannah-Jones: 503-294-5968; nhannahjones@news.oregonian.com

....................
My comment: THIS STORY WAS FORWARDED BY MY FREIND BLAKE WITH THIS NOTE:
Friends,
I thought I'd pass along a story I read in the newspaper here about a kidney donor who has fallen on hard times.  Rick Wilson is an altruistic donor who gave a kidney to a stranger, like Paul and Father Pat and others in this group.  I don't know Rick personally, but he does live in the same city where I work (Salem, Oregon), so it is possible I will meet him at some point.  He could use some encouragement, and knowing this group is very good at that, I thought I'd share this story in case anyone would like to send Rick a note of encouragement.  I don't know if he has his own e-mail address, but you could send something to Nikole, the reporter who wrote the story, at nhannahjones@news.oregonian.com.   She is collecting e-mails from people to deliver to him.
 
Web location of story that appeared in the paper.
http://www.oregonlive.com/oregonian/stories/index.ssf?/base/news/1172897719111210.xml&coll=7
 
Thanks.
 
Blake