Written by Beth Ann Kavanagh, Member of the Boise Area, Tom Hicks, 2024 Malade, and Susan Karpiel, Convenor Boise Area

Beth Ann Kavanagh, newly invested in October 2024, attended the 2024 Lourdes Pilgrimage (Red Team) and met Tom Hicks, a Malade, also on the Red Team.  Tom has heredity kidney (renal) failure.  An easy measurement of kidney function is the Glomerular Filtration Rate (GFR). Tom’s GFR had dipped to 20% as of the Pilgrimage (dialysis is recommended at between 10-15% and normal is above 60%). Since Lourdes, Tom’s GFR stabilized, but towards the end of the year, began trending down to 15%.

As both live in Boise, ID, Beth Ann and her husband grew to know Tom and his wife, Juliet, over the next couple of months. One evening in August after a friendly dinner out, Beth Ann felt a nudge from the Holy Spirit. The message was “If not you, who”?  Beth Ann offered Tom and Juliet to be worked up as a potential kidney donor. With the guidance of the Holy Spirit, practicing the charity of Jesus and praying the daily prayer of The Order “forgetful of myself”, Beth Ann registered with the National Kidney Registry. The testing was medically rigorous and took several months to complete, with numerous “ups and downs” as the testing progressed.

Once medically cleared on December 12^th (the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe), Beth Ann and Tom’s medical information was uploaded to the National Kidney Registry for a paired living kidney donation/transplant on December 30, 2024. A paired donation is one where Beth Ann would donate her kidney to someone else, on Tom’s behalf, and another willing donor would give Tom their kidney.   Because Tom came in with Beth Ann as a living donor, he was moved up approximately ten years on the waiting list. He would have survived the up to 10 years, with difficulty, on dialysis, should he have had to wait. The 10 years is the typical waiting period a person like Tom would have to wait for a cadaveric kidney.

Tom & Beth Ann post transplant (February 2025)

On January 7^th this year, both received a call from the UC Irvine Transplant Center that they had identified a great match for Tom. “How soon can you schedule surgery?” was the question. Both Beth Ann’s donation and Tom’s transplant surgery were performed at UC Irvine Medical Center January 29^th.  They walked into pre-op together, and the surgeries that followed were both successful. Beth Ann’s kidney went to a recipient at Duke Medical Center in North Carolina and Tom’s kidney was flown in from Northern California.

The Boise Area is pleased to report that both Beth Ann and Tom are recovering well and Tom’s GFR is fluctuating now at between 60-70%, as his body is adapting, post-transplant, to his new “addition”! Also, Beth Ann’s kidney is thriving in a lucky man in North Carolina.

Beth Ann saved Tom’s life and Our Lady of Lourdes protected Tom.

As the Convenor for Boise, this heroic act constantly fills me with emotion and tears.  I sponsored Beth Ann, and my husband Martin was her seconder.  Members may remember her husband Coleman, who was invested in October.  They are Boise’s first addition to our membership base as Dame and Knight.   This is truly a story of a miracle that started in Lourdes.  As Convenor, I pray and hope, given how Beth Ann and Tom met in Lourdes and less than nine months later she saved his life, that the Order will recognize Beth Ann for her selfless, altruistic, courageous and magnanimous act.

Our Lady of Lourdes, Pray for Us!