Miraculous match

Leslie Naff and Shaun Pezant first bonded over music. On Wednesday nights Naff would sit in the chapel of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and meditate as Pezant played the piano. Although they were separated by the length of the chapel, they were more intertwined than either could imagine — closer than siblings, some could say.

“I had never thought about donating a kidney, and if I had a top-10 list [of people I thought I would donate a kidney to], Shaun would not have been on it,” she said.

After all, most kidney donors are blood relatives.

From the beginning

Pezant’s talent for writing and directing music is known to many. Each Sunday, he leads the music for morning worship services at Church of the Holy Apostles in Hoover and the evening contemporary service at St. Luke’s, where he has been a member for 14 years. But for most of his life he chose not to reveal deeper parts of himself beyond his closest circle of family and friends.

In his 30s he met his birth mother for the first time and learned she had a genetic kidney disease. As he soon found out, he had it, too.

Over the course of his adulthood, polycystic kidney disease gradually caused abnormal growth in his kidneys. He originally thought it would not affect him until he was in his 60s or 70s, but by age 44, his kidney function had started to plummet. Each of his kidneys, normally about the size of a fist, had grown to be the size of a 2-liter bottle of soda.

By the end of 2012, he was a few months away from needing dialysis, and about a year from death if he did not receive a transplant. Around the same time, Pezant’s wife, Judy, was recovering from chemotherapy, a mastectomy and radiation due to her Stage IV breast cancer, which was diagnosed in late 2012.

For years, Pezant had only told his closest friends about his kidneys. Even after he knew he needed a transplant and no one he had told was a match, he shied away from telling others.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, there are currently 106,080 people on a national waiting list for a kidney, a number significantly higher than for any other organ.

The wait usually takes about seven years, and at the rate of his kidney decline in recent years, Pezant knew he didn’t have that long.

But as it turns out, he didn’t have to wait.  

The big reveal

When Pezant finally opened up about his need for a kidney and word got out to the congregations at both St. Luke’s and the Church of the Holy Apostles, he saw the extreme generosity and compassion of his community manifested.

“I was raised to bear bad things and keep your chin up,” he said. “If I had not gotten over that and started to share, the outcome probably would have been really different.”

Scores of people set the record for the number of people who requested to be tested for a kidney transplant. UAB had never seen anything like it. In the weeks and months following the transplant, Pezant would continue to run into people who told him they had been tested as potential donors for him.

“It took me out of my comfort zone and showed me the importance of community in action,” Pezant said. “I have prayed for others, but to see these two communities rally around my needs was overwhelming and extremely humbling.”

A match

Naff, a St. Luke’s member of 20 years, had long been waiting for God to show her “thunder and lightning” to reveal his presence. But, she said, he’d always just shown her his “still, small voice,” just has he did for Elijah in 1 Kings 19. Over the past year, though, God’s voice would grow to be more audible for her.

By late 2012, Pezant and Naff had grown to more than acquaintances, but neither would count the other as a close friend.

Naff had noticed that Pezant had been gaining weight, but she didn’t know why. In January, Pezant finally opened up to a group at St. Luke’s through an email from the church’s rector Rich Wester.

The night after the email was sent, Pezant’s jazz band, Top Secret, opened for Claypool Lecture Series, and Naff, who was on the planning committee for the event, asked Pezant about what was going on with his health. She didn’t anticipate what would happen next.

“It’s like words just came out of my mouth,” she said. “I hadn’t thought about it [before that], but I told him I wanted to be tested [to donate a kidney to him].”

With that, Naff put in her name. Next came a phone interview and a day of various medical tests. The kidney transplant coordinator from UAB called Naff on a Wednesday with big news.

She was a closer tissue match to Pezant than a sibling.

Naff spotted him sitting in the front row of the dark sanctuary at St. Luke’s and tapped him on the shoulder to share the news.

“It was so surreal,” Naff said. “We were both in shock.”

Pezant knew indirectly a donor had been found, but before that moment, he didn’t know who it was.

“When I heard it was Leslie, I cried,” he said. “It’s still hard to process the magnitude of the entire thing.”

Prior to the news, Pezant had planned his memorial service, updated his will and told the choirs he directs that he would probably take a leave of absence from working in a few months. As fatigue and mental cloudiness had worsened, he knew he couldn’t keep working.

Operation time

Naff received mixed reactions from her family about the upcoming transplant. Her husband was supportive but said that he would never have done it. Her brother and sister-in-law told her they didn’t want to her to do it.

“I was never afraid or scared,” she said. “But I had never thought about what people’s reactions would be. It was so disheartening. I just told them I couldn’t explain and didn’t feel the need to explain myself.”

Still, she proceeded.

On Easter Sunday, Pezant had asked Naff to sing in the choir he leads for the evening contemporary service at St. Luke’s. She stood next to Pezant’s 15-year-old son as they sang “I am the Lord” echoed by “Do not fear” in Isaiah 43:

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you … When you pass through the fire, you’ll not be hurt and the flames will not consume you.”

With his back to the congregation as he directed, Pezant’s eyes filled with tears. Those lyrics, Pezant said, became the theme song for him and for Naff on their journey.

The worship service was followed by service of prayer and healing for the duo before their surgeries that week. Hundreds of people attended.

“From that point on, there was no anxiety going into surgery,” Pezant said.

Sitting in her own hospital bed in recovery, Naff got a text message saying Pezant’s new kidney was fully functioning. With the removal of his two kidneys and transplant of hers, he had had lost 40 pounds over the course of the eight-hour surgery.

Naff’s sister-in-law was sitting with her when she got the news about Pezant. At that moment, her heart changed toward Naff’s decision.

“I couldn’t understand why you were doing this,” she told Naff. “But I get it now. I feel like his family is part of our family.”

Post-recovery

Nine months later, Pezant has fully recovered and has an “incredible energy” he hadn’t realized he was missing as his condition had gradually worsened. He and Naff meet up regularly and have what Pezant calls an “unbreakable bond.”

Naff feels like she has had her “thunder and lighting” experience, and Pezant has learned how important it was for him to share his need even as so many others around him are passing through their own waters and fire in life.

Still, he said he is processing everything that happened and has a hard time articulating what it means that someone gave him the gift of life. Naff has told him not to thank her.

“Thank God,” she tells him.