Lexington man to receive the gift of a lifetime from wife

Jeremy Maynard has been waiting for a kidney since 2021

LEXINGTON, Ky. (WTVQ) — Donate Life Kentucky has launched its “Save My Human” campaign, where pets across the nation have the opportunity to use their voice, or bark, to help those they love the most, their humans, and encourage them to sign up to be an organ donor.

Jeremy Maynard is in need of a kidney donation. It’s a fight he’s been battling since 2021, when he went to the hospital for what he thought were mild symptoms, but in his heart ,he knew something was off.

“I went into the ER thinking that I just had a fever and then my creatinine was 13 and they said, yeah, we’ve got really bad news. You’re going to need a kidney,” adds Maynard.

A battle that began shortly after, he says the very next day he began with emergency dialysis.

“It was surreal that I didn’t know anything about it and it was a lot of major changes because there are dietary changes you know, have to manage dialysis,” he also says.

He says the diagnosis made him even more uncertain, questioning everything, “you’re first classified as an acute kidney injury, and then you become ESRD, end-stage renal disease, and once you become ESRD, then you can start working on the list the transplant list requirements.”

Adding that if anything pops up in the additional tests, you’re back to square one.
But as their wedding vows said, in sickness and in health, the one person Jeremy decided to spend the rest of his life with, is also the one willing to save his life.

“I had 15 people sign up to donate, 15 live potential live donors. My wife was the first one on the list and she’s actually the best match, and I actually found out yesterday that we’re back on and they scheduled us for March 6th,” he says.

The gift of a lifetime, that Maynard says could help change someone else’s life, “please do donate organs if you have any inkling to do it at all. Dialysis is really not a long-term solution.”

Donate Life KY says last year, Kentucky organ donor affiliates supported 239 organ donors and 539 tissue donors resulting in nearly 600 lives saved across the commonwealth, the most lives saved in any year.
if you would like to sign up as an organ donor and potentially be a match for someone, click here.