CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — A Live Oak County woman showed her love for her husband after she donated her kidney to him in order to save his life.
Robert McWilliams has been living for 44 years with the weight of uncertainty on his shoulders. He was diagnosed with cancer at a young age.
"I was completely prepared to die,” McWilliams said.
He said that it was a long process and relied on his faith in God to get him through the toughest times of his life.
“They gave me a drug called Cisplatin. That drug at the time was sort of a still-experimental drug and things went haywire when they gave me that chemotherapy drug and it caused my kidneys to fail at a very early age,” he said.
McWilliams said that he used that same faith and made an initial call to get on the donor waiting list to receive a kidney.
"I contacted the transplant center and the first thing they do is try and decide whether or not I am a good candidate to receive a kidney,"
His wife, Tiffany said that she wanted to be tested to see if she was a match. Not only was she a perfect match for him but also the match he needed to survive.
"Well, the surgeon said my kidney was beautiful and perfect,” Tiffany McWilliams said.
So, the couple decided that they were going to go under the knife together in June of this year.
Tiffany said that she is happy that her husband can start to live a normal life.
"I'm relieved to do it. He can live a healthier, happier life and we can live a healthier, happier life as a family without having to have so much medical intervention,” she said. “When though he was alive and he was not on dialysis, he sugars coats a lot. It has not been an easy road.”
Robert McWilliams said the transplant has shown him that a bond goes beyond vows.
"This was not a fight just for me,” McWilliams said. “This was a fight for my wife, for my children, for my family, for my friends, and to that extent, I would've gone to the end of the world and I would've fought until I couldn't fight anymore.”
However, Tiffany McWilliams said that for her, this was about giving the gift of life to the man she loves.
"You can give a kidney and change not just the recipient's life, but their whole family,” Tiffany McWilliams said.
