'I'm so blessed': Former Lake County leader receives lifesaving kidney donation
After more than a year of searching and a record number of potential donors, longtime Lake County leader and public servant Bonnie Thomson Carter has received a new kidney, she announced Wednesday.
At least 64 people volunteered to donate one of their kidneys to Carter, 66, after learning of her plight. In the end, Rob Kesler, a 33-year-old father of two from Kirkland, donated a kidney to the former Lake County Board member from Ingleside.
The kidney transplant surgery performed on Friday, March 11, at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago was deemed a success.
Like so many of the people who volunteered to donate a kidney to Carter, Kesler was a stranger to her before seeing a sign for her “Bonnie's Gift of Life” campaign in Spring Grove on Aug. 17, 2021. The sign was one of 250 put up by Carter's friends and family over the last year.
Kesler, who works for an internet service maintenance company, said he never knew where Spring Grove was before being sent there for light-duty work while healing from a recent car crash.
“Had that person not slammed into me at my job, placing me on light duty, I never would have been in Spring Grove to see that sign,” said Kesler. “I have three reasons why I'm doing this: Life is too precious, there is no greater gift you can give another person and I don't need two kidneys, so I have an extra one to give.”
Carter said she is so grateful Kesler came into her life and said now considers him part of her extended family.
“He is so kind, he has a wonderful sense of humor, and he is armored with a devotion to help others,” Carter said. “I'm so blessed he came into my life.”
Kesler is grateful as well, in part because saving someone's life had been on his bucket list.
Carter's need for a kidney arose in 2019, when she was diagnosed with an aggressive multiple myeloma cancer. A succession of treatments worked against the cancer, and Carter is in remission. But the damage to her kidneys remained and she suffered from low blood pressure, body shakes and lightheadedness so bad that she wouldn't stand up without knowing what she can grab if she falls.
Carter's doctors said she'd only live another three to five years on dialysis, and because it can take as long as eight years to receive a kidney from a donor who had died, Carter started her search for a live donor.
It's rare for so many to come forward for one person, Dr. John Friedewald, the medical director of the kidney and pancreas transplant program at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, said in January.
“It's always great when someone can generate such interest in living kidney donation,” Friedewald said. “Oftentimes, those donors start a kidney chain which can facilitate a lot of transplants down the road.”
Information was not immediately available about whether anyone who volunteered to donate to Carter intends to or has donated a kidney to someone else.
Kesler said doctors at Northwestern told him he was a perfect match with Carter.
Carter served on the county board from 1996 to 2016 and was president of the Lake County Forest Preserve District Board from 2002 to 2010.
She led the pro-environment Republican bloc that sought to control development in the county in the 1990s and preserve open space. As a forest board member, she oversaw the acquisition of thousands of acres and the construction of miles of trails.