Couple feel call to give kidneys: After wife donates organ, Ankeny man realizes

[Clark]

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20111128/NEWS/311280023/-1/VIDEONETWORK/?odyssey=nav%7Chead

Couple feel call to give kidneys
After wife donates organ, Ankeny man realizes he, too, wants to give

Sherry Whisler had never had such an epiphany.

Sitting next to Karen Harris in a Bible study at their Urbandale church on a Wednesday night last year, she suddenly realized that she would be the one to change, and perhaps save, Harris' life.

"I can't explain it," she said. "I just knew that it would be me."

Whisler asked Harris for her blood type, and how she could donate a kidney, setting off months of tests, surgery and recovery.

Then came a second realization: Whisler's husband, Mike, told his wife he also wanted to donate.

On Tuesday, one of his kidneys will be transplanted into a Sudanese immigrant with a wife and four children who has been on dialysis for more than four years.

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