By Katie Gager, Student Reporter
An ACU alumnus and Texas attorney found himself in the trial of his life when he discovered he would need a kidney transplant and received one last month from an unlikely donor – an opposing lawyer in more than 4,000 cases.
Scott Skelton (’89), son of ACU trustee Kay Skelton, was diagnosed three years ago with iGA, a nephropathy, autoimmune disease that causes kidney failure in nearly 20 percent of adults, and had a kidney transplant Feb. 12.
Skelton said he hoped he would be in the 80 percent of people who could control the disease with medication; however, the disease continued to progress. In November 2008, right before Thanksgiving, Skelton learned he would need a kidney transplant.
“I was trying to get into a program where you have to fill out an application and get on a waiting list,” Skelton said. “It took a while and wasn’t very successful.”
It was then that Skelton contacted his wife’s former roommate from ACU, Dr. Kim Couch McMillan, who is a doctor in the Baylor Medical System and whose father, Dr. Carl Couch, is on the executive team at Baylor Medical. Because of these connections, Skelton’s application was processed, and he was ready for a donor.
“Without my ACU connections this may have never happened in time to keep me off dialysis,” Skelton said. “They didn’t put me in front of anybody or move me up on the list, but they knew who I needed to get in contact with.”
Keith Langston, civil lawyer in the Daingerfield area, who has been an opposing attorney of Skelton’s in more than 4,000 cases in the past five years, was the willing donor of the needed kidney.
“Keith had heard from a colleague that I needed a kidney,” Skelton said. “He then called me up immediately and said, ‘I hear you need a kidney and I want to donate you one.'”
The two lawyers, while opposing each other in court cases, had shared a friendship before the transplant, Langston said. However, their relationship has grown after sharing this life changing experience.
“We are closer friends than we were before,” Langston said. “And I don’t think there is a way that you could go through something like that, with somebody, without building a relationship.”
For Langston it was a small sacrifice he was willing to make.
“I learned that you can take a little bit of time out of your life, a week or less, and you can make a big life changing difference for someone else,” he said.
Becoming an organ donor is a fairly easy process, Langston said. Willing donors have two options: to be a live donor where they can donate several organs within their body while they still are alive or to be a donor upon death.
Langston and Skelton recommend that anyone interested in donating should visit the Web site www.donatelifetexas.org for more information or for kidney donations, specifically visit www.paireddonation.org.
“Most people are uneducated about how this works,” Langston said. “And are apprehensive to even consider something like this because they don’t understand it. People think it will dramatically and drastically change and affect your whole life, but it won’t. In six days I was completely back to normal.”
For Skelton the sacrifice provided him a life of chances and experiences.
