‘He is my hero,’ says kidney recipient about local Marine

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‘He is my hero,’ says kidney recipient about local Marine
Marine Cpl. Ryan Fackey, who served in Iraq, donated a kidney to a girl in South Carolina.

By Richard O Jones, Staff Writer
10:24 PM Wednesday, November 25, 2009

HAMILTON — Marine Cpl. Ryan Fackey, a 2006 Hamilton High School graduate, received a bit of a hero’s welcome when he went back to visit his former teachers and this year’s NJROTC cadets earlier this week.

It wasn’t because Fackey had just returned from war, although he’s been there, having served a seven-month tour of duty in Iraq.

Rather, it was because 21-year-old Fackey spent his Veterans Day this year performing a different kind of service by being “a good Samaritan donor,” offering up one of his kidneys to a young woman he didn’t even know.

Those who know him don’t seem surprised at the gift and accept his explanation that he did it just because he felt it would be a good thing to do.

“He’s always been a giving person,” said his mother, Brenda Fackey.

She said that six or eight months ago, she mentioned in passing during phone call from her son that she was shopping for a washer because hers had broken.

“The next day, Lowe’s is knocking at the door with a new washer,” she said. “Not long after that, my mother called me and said that she just got a new computer monitor in the mail,” another unsolicited donation from the young Marine.

According to Capt. Rex Settlemoir, former NJROTC instructor at Hamilton High, Fackey was a goal-oriented cadet who always looked out for others.

“He was in my class for three years and from his first day in class his goal was to be a Marine, and he never wavered from that goal,” Settlemoir said. “He made it clear that he was following in his family’s footsteps and left for the Marine Corps 10 days after graduation.

“Ryan was involved in every activity and he was our ‘go-to guy,’ ” Settlemoir said. “If we ever needed anything, his generosity was overwhelming.”

So when Fackey says, “I just wanted to give. There was no big inspiration,” his colleagues understand.

But as it turns out, Fackey’s donation, which could have cost him his Marine Corps career in addition to the health risks, did get an unexpected reward for saving the life of 15-year-old Dani Jones of South Carolina: He gained a second family.

Serviceman looks for ways to give of himself, literally

Marine Cpl. Ryan Fackey’s seven months in Iraq during 2008 were fairly uneventful, he said.

“I only got shot at once, and nobody got killed,” he said. “I couldn’t have asked for a better appointment.”

He did see some of the tragedy of war, however. As he patrolled the streets young children with horrible scars or missing limbs would beg the soldiers for candy.

So when he returned, he started looking for ways that he could help people, children especially.

Giving blood was good, but when he was surfing the Internet looking for other avenues, he began to learn about altruistic organ donations and the number of people waiting for a kidney transplant.

According to the National Kidney Foundation, 95,000 people in the United States are currently on the waiting list for a kidney and an additional 4,000 people are added to the list each month.

“You go through life with two kidneys when you only need one,” he said, “and that other one can save someone’s life.”

He’d never been treated in a hospital except for an emergency room visit for a broken arm and had never experienced a general anesthetic except when having his wisdom teeth extracted, but still he started the process, winding his way through the red tape of the U.S. Marine Corps, where he serves as an FA-18 fighter jet mechanic in Beaufort, S.C., and letting his family know.

“It took me aback,” said his mother, Brenda Fackey. “I kept thinking, ‘What if you have a child that needs one someday, or some other member of your family?’ ”

“I’m healthy now, and it’s going to save someone’s life,” he told her. “I want to do it.”

He signed up to be an anonymous donor, stipulating only that his kidney should go to someone between 8 and 18 years old.

His recipient turned out to be Dani Jones, a 15-year-old girl from Columbia, S.C., who has a lifelong history of health issues, including diabetes, growth deficiency, seizures and cataracts. She had a bone marrow transplant when she was 3 for a rare condition known as myelofibrosis, said her mother, Paula Wilson, who saw her toddler through 79 days of hospitalization.

The steroids and other medicines she has taken caused her kidneys to fail, so her doctors put her on the transplant list in April. She was taken off for a while because of complications, then put back on the waiting list on Monday, Nov. 2.

“They said it might take a while,” Wilson said, but by that Friday, the family got the call that a donor might be available, and by Monday, it was confirmed: Ryan Fackey’s kidney was a perfect match.

“They didn’t tell us too much about him,” Wilson said, “except that he was 21 years old. That was good. I thought, ‘He’s got to be God-sent.’

“They asked us if we wanted to meet him, I said, ‘Why wouldn’t we?’”

Even though he had planned to remain anonymous, Fackey agreed to meet Dani and her family the day before the surgery.

“We got to briefly meet in the hospital and hug,” Wilson said. “And Dani got all googly-eyed when she saw him walk in.”

Fackey was planning on having a lobster dinner with his mother on the night before his surgery, but he accepted an invitation to go out with Dani’s family to have chicken wings.

“She had one of her seizures while we were sitting there, and I saw him get this look in his eyes, like, ‘Is she going to be all right?’ ” Wilson said.

After she came around, he said to her, “This makes me want to do this even more. I’m glad I’m giving my kidney to you.”

The transplant went off without a hitch, and the first thing Dani said when she came out of anesthetic, her mother said, was “Where’s Ryan?”

Both are recovering nicely. Fackey said it hurt for a few days, but was able to come to Hamilton to finish his recovery. Jones has been taking new medicine and her seizures have abated and doctors hope the new kidney will cure her diabetes.

Because he’ll be back on duty in South Carolina for the Christmas holiday, Fackey is planning to spend it with Dani’s family, and Dani is planning to come to Hamilton next summer to visit with Fackey and his family.

“We talk every day now,” Fackey said.

“We definitely connected,” Wilson said. “They both have two families now.”

“He did a courageous thing,” Dani said. “He is my hero.”

Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2188 or rjones@coxohio.com.

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