A Minnesota mom gave the ultimate lifesaving thank you gift to the stranger who saved the life of her baby daughter.
Becca Bundy first met Bill Cox, a volunteer firefighter with the Bearville Volunteer Fire Department, when, in August of 2016, he arrived on the scene after receiving the call that Bundy’s then 1-year-old daughter Hadley was having a seizure in the family’s northern Minnesota home.
Videos by PopCulture.com
“I got there and helped settle people down until an ambulance could get there and take care of her,” Cox told CNN.
Two years later, in October of 2018, their paths would unexpectedly cross again when Bundy went to a benefit for a neighbor at the Viking Bar, where Cox, who had been working there for 16 years, was standing behind the bar wearing a bright green shirt with a heartbreaking message: “My Name is Bill. I’m in end stage KIDNEY FAILURE And in need of a KIDNEY.”
Cox, who had been born with just a single kidney, had been placed on the transplant list in 2017 after the organ began to fail. In January of this year, he had started dialysis and the desperate search for a donor, creating two of the bright green shirts he had been wearing when he and Bundy met for a second time.
Although the message had prompted four or five people to offer their kidneys, none of them were candidates. That is, until Bundy offered to return the lifesaving favor that Cox had offered he two years prior.
“This is what started the journey. I remember telling Bill throughout my testing at one point that I knew I was the one,” Bundy recalled. “I can remember us both crying — tears of joy of course — and Bill thanking me.”
At the University of Minnesota Medical Center in February, the two underwent a successful kidney transplant, and Cox has since discontinued dialysis and begun spending more time with his family. Since the surgery, he and Bundy have also kept in touch.
“We continue to speak on a regular basis and do our best to get together as often as we can,” Bundy said.
“She’s my angel,” Cox, who carved a wooden angel for her and painted it her favorite color, added. “She saved my life and I thought that would be an appropriate little gift for them.”
According to the National Kidney Foundation, some 30 million people in the United States are affected by kidney disease, with nearly 90 percent unaware that they have it. The American Transplant Foundation reports that there are over 115,000 people currently on the waiting list to receive a life-saving organ and that 20 people a day die awaiting organ transplants.
